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HBOS has entered interest rate and currency swaps to hedge the risk on a recent EUR2 billion (USD2.54 billion) bond issue

HSBC plans to set up an equity derivatives proprietary trading desk in Asia as part of its expansion in equity derivatives.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association is planning to produce a new set of commodity definitions that will expand the number of provisions for physically settling trades and the number of asset classes.

JPMorgan's John Moore, v.p. in equity derivative sales in Hong Kong, has left the industry to return to his native Australia.

Andrea Bryan, former head of structured finance at Standard & Poor's in Tokyo, has moved to New York to take on responsibility for the ratings agency's synthetic collateralized debt obligation activities in the region.

Singapore's Pacific Asset Management, with over USD150 million under management, is looking to structure synthetic collateralized debt obligations and start trading credit-default swaps later this year.

Lehman Brothers has relocated Douglas Ireland, Asian head of fixed income sales in Tokyo, to San Francisco to head the private client services business and manage the branch.

Moody's Investors Service has called in true sale collateralized debt obligation managers to talk about leveraged interest-rate instruments, know as inverse floaters, which it believes may have been purchased without authorization.

TradingLab, a Milan-based subsidiary of UniCredito Italiano, has started marketing a novel capital-guaranteed structured product to private asset managers.

Columbia Management Group is looking to add higher-quality names for the junk bond portion of its $1.3 billion Strategic Income Fund, given the recent run up in the prices of lower-quality bonds.

ABN AMRO has let go of nearly half its U.S. taxable fixed income sales force and closed its San Francisco sales office.

Wright Investors' Service, which manages roughly $1.5 billion in fixed income, may invest about $30 million of new cash in agency bonds if spreads widen, says James Fields, portfolio manager in Milford, Conn.