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Merrill Lynch has hired Andrew Song, head of equity derivative index options trading, Mike Ebert, an analyst in Song's team, and Daniel Cangemi, an equity options trader, all from Goldman Sachs in London.

MeesPierson Private Bank has started marketing its first capital protected real estate fund and opted to use a portfolio threshold method rather than options to provide the money-back guarantee.

Norwich Union, a U.K. insurance group, is considering making its debut into the fund-linked product market and will look at products that use fund derivatives to give exposure to mutual funds with some capital protection.

Nomura has started a global hiring spree for equity and credit derivatives and reportedly hired an equity derivatives team from Merrill Lynch in the process.

An offshore non-deliverable interest rate swap market for India has emerged in recent weeks, according to derivatives traders.

RBC Capital Markets will begin trading volatility arbitrage as part of its proprietary trading operations and has raided Mako Global Derivatives to kick start the activity.

Bank of America has pulled all of its credit research save international strategy back to New York and Charlotte, N.C.

BNP Paribas' structured credit solutions group in London has lost two senior salesmen covering Italy.

German mortgage bank Deutsche Genossenschafts-Hypothekenbank is looking to invest E200-300 million by the end of the year in U.K. and Italian commercial mortgage-backed securities and the buy-to-let and non-conforming segments of the U.K. residential mortgage-backed market.

Janus Capital Group is focusing its high-yield investments in utility, wireless and chemical credits to reduce interest-rate sensitivity, said Gibson Smith, portfolio manager of the $1.4 billion fund in Denver.

The Vanguard Group, State Street Global Advisors and Barclays Global Investors are among the fixed-income giants planning to increase their holdings of mortgage-backed securities as a result of a change in the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index.