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Three of Deutsche Bank's structured credit traders in New York have raised USD7,000 for a children's charity by shaving their heads and are calling for their boss, John Pipilis, to take the razor next.

--Nigel Beattie, managing director and head of the Pacific-Rim equity investor client group at Merrill Lynch in Tokyo, commenting on the firm's recent hires.

Nationwide Building Society, a U.K. thrift, is considering hedging currency risk on a USD1.2 billion benchmark bond.

Southern Co., the holding company of several electricity distributors including Alabama Power and Georgia Power, has entered floating-to-fixed interest-rate swaps with a USD470 million notional size to lock in rates ahead of a planned debt issue.

Christian Kwek, head of European equity derivatives marketing at BNP Paribas in London, has been promoted to global head of structured products.

CDC IXIS Capital Markets is pitching to Japanese institutional and high-net-worth investors a novel note--linked to an index of hedge funds--that combines principal-protection and leverage.

CDO equity compares favorably to other fixed income, equity and hedge fund assets, according to a study by Merrill Lynch.

Zais Group, a CDO manager, is calling for an eBay-type seller rating for portfolio managers offloading collateralized debt obligations in the secondary market so that potential purchasers don't waste resources trying to price deals that never get sold.

Arturo Cifuentes, managing director and head of CDO research at Wachovia Securities, used his doctorate in applied mechanics and degree in civil engineering from the California Institute of Technology to draw an analogy between collateralized debt obligations and earthquake-resistant buildings and concluded that CDOs should be more shock-proof.

Winchester Capital Principal Finance is planning to enter an innovative mortgage-backed security transaction in which it sells protection on single pools of MBS still in the pipeline.

Citigroup's financial markets group in Seoul has been hit by a pair of high-level departures, according to officials close to the firm.

Inter-American Development Bank is preparing to launch an up to TWD13 billion (USD300 million) weather-linked bond in Taiwan, which is widely believed to be the first such deal in Asia and perhaps only the second in the world.