Free content

Barclays Capital has hired Mark Higgins, an equity derivatives sales professional covering Irish and Scandinavian clients at SG Corporate and Investment Banking in London, to fill a newly created role in the investor solutions team. He is covering the same client base.

BondWeek is the leading news publication for fixed-income professionals, covering new deals, structures, asset-backed securities, industry and market activity.

BondWeek is the leading news publication for fixed-income professionals, covering new deals, structures, asset-backed securities, industry and market activity.

BondWeek is the leading news publication for fixed-income professionals, covering new deals, structures, asset-backed securities, industry and market activity.

AXA Investment Managers has launched its first open-ended dynamic asset allocation product for the U.K. market and has used over-the-counter derivatives to hedge the gap risk. Vincent de Martel, director in structured products and alternative investment management in London, said the reason it has not issued such a deal before is it is hard to hedge so-called gap risk, the risk that the underlying investments will fall through certain thresholds without AXA having time to redistribute assets.

BNP Paribas has hired Jaap Van Dijk, an equity derivatives marketer for the Netherlands at UBS in London, in a similar role. Christian Kwek, European head of equity derivatives marketing in London, said Van Dijk will report to Lars Sjumarken, head of equity derivatives marketing for Northern Europe in London. Kwek said the firm hired van Dijk to replace Stephen Birkwood, who left in May to joinDeutsche Bank in a similar role.

Mika Toikka and his team of equity derivatives analysts at Credit Suisse First Boston have taken Institutional Investor's top-spot in equity derivatives. Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch came second and third, respectively.

Collateralized debt obligation shops are pitching trades in which investors snap up cheap volatility with the expectation that this will rise in the new year. In the trades investors buy equity tranches of CDOs and sell protection on the single names, which isolates the correlation element.

Commerzbank Securities has promoted both its global and U.S. heads of equity derivatives structuring heads. Roberto Vila, global head of equity derivatives structuring in London, is now top dog as global head of equity derivatives, while Ted Madara, head of U.S. equity derivatives structuring in New York, is heading equity derivatives for the U.S. Neither Vila nor Madara returned calls. Previously overall responsibility for equity derivatives had been shared among several staffers.

One-month euro/dollar implied volatility recovered to 11.5% from earlier lows of 10.5% last week following the surprise strengthening of the euro against the dollar on Wednesday . In the spot market the euro strengthened to USD1.1810 from USD1.1650 earlier in the week. This was accompanied by a sharp sell off in short-dated euro calls with strikes at USD1.15/1.16 at the beginning of the week, according to a London-based trader.

Deutsche Bank is planning to offer investors synthetic exposure to the Indian equity market in the coming months. The firm has applied for qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) status, which means it can offer the so-called market-access products. Ricardo Honegger, Asian and Japanese head of global equity derivatives in Hong Kong, said, "We've received lots of requests from clients." He added that there is interest from foreign investors to tap the growing market in India.