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Segall Bryant & Hamill Investment Counsel plans to buy up to $22 million in mortgage-backed securities with new cash.

Cantor Fitzgerald has hired two Wall Street mortgage veterans to jumpstart a mortgage-backed sales and trading effort it is establishing and plans to hire up to 25 more mortgage sales and trading professionals over the coming months.

Citigroup Global Markets is preparing a E 1 billion securitization of commercial office space leases for the Blackstone Group .

Payden & Rygel Investment Management is looking to buy lower-tier investment-grade corporate bonds on the view that economic growth, while not robust, is strong enough to allow companies to pay off their debt.

Investors and analysts are expecting the asset-backed market's next innovation to be the availability of default protection that could be used to effectively hedge portfolios of structured finance bonds.

Old Mutual Asset Managers plans to further reduce its exposure to Treasuries by selling the equivalent of up to £6 million in T-bills as the global economy continues to improve.

Ace has hired Michael Schozer, managing director and head of structured finance and credit derivatives at Ambac Financial Group in New York, as president of one of its business units. One official said Schozer will land at Ace Guaranty Corp, which operates in the credit derivatives, structured cash products, insurance and reinsurance markets. Schozer declined comment. Barbara Van Hassel, spokeswoman, Joe Swain, ceo, and Howard Albert, president, did not return calls.

Derivatives linked to both Chinese A shares and index-related structures have started to grab investors' attention as more entities market a wider range of instruments. "The China story is still hot," said Nicole Yuen, head of China equities at UBS in Hong Kong. Clients have been building up positions in selected stocks via market access derivatives because they are becoming familiar with the documentation and outlook for the newly accessible A share market, Yuen added.

Barclays Capital has priced a giant private synthetic collateralized debt obligation, which in combination with a flurry of other deals hitting the market has driven tight credit spreads even tighter. Several credit pros pointed to the size of Barclays' seven-year deal, which references a several billion dollar portfolio of U.S. and European investment grade credit-default swaps, as being a major factor driving spread tightening. Andrew Whittle, European head of credit derivatives at Barclays Capital in London, said the firm does not comment on private transactions.

BNP Paribas has hired Nat Richer, a crude oil derivatives trader at Banc of America Securities in New York, as a director in a similar position. Jean-Marc Bonnefous, head of commodity derivatives in New York, to whom Richer reports, said the firm is growing its oil derivatives presence in order to meet growing client interest in the products caused by factors such as an increase in the trading of fuel being shipped from Western countries to Asia.

Euro/dollar spot has been hitting record highs over the last week, yet implied volatility keeps falling. Implied volatility has fallen to 10.3% from 11% last week while the euro has jumped to USD1.22 from USD1.20. Traders expect to see it fall to 10% within a month.