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Odey Asset Management plans to launch a global treasury fund that will trade over-the-counter foreign exchange options. Richard Neville-Rolfe, fund manager in London, said he will use medium-term vanilla fx options to express global macro views.

Credit-default swap spreads on Tesco and J Sainsbury widened last week after a U.K. government decision that the grocers could not take over Safeway. Five-year protection on Sainsbury jumped to 57 basis points on Wednesday from 44.5bps the week before. Tesco widened to 20bps from 18bps in the same period, according to traders.

This chart, provided by Citibank/Salomon Smith Barney Inc., tracks bid-ask prices for par credit facilities that trade in the secondary market. It also tracks facility amounts, ratings, pricing and maturities.

--David Marsh, v.p. and high-yield analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group on prospects for the sector.

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.

KBC Alternative Investment Management, a hedge fund manager with USD2.5 billion in assets, is planning to launch a quantitative statistical-arbitrage credit hedge fund. This would be one of the first hedge funds to pursue this strategy in the credit markets, according to hedge fund sales professionals. Statistical arbitrage is popular in equities but until recently the instruments for shorting credit, such as default swaps, have not been available at tight enough bid/offer spreads to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunities, according to Andy Preston, cio in London.

Last week's surge in implied volatility across Asian currencies on the back of comments from the Group-of-Seven most industrialized countries could spark a long-term boost to volumes. "The recent moves have definitely put the Asian currency market back on more players' radar," said Lee Chee Pin, head of foreign exchange at Bank of America in Singapore.

Tight security at the Roosevelt Hotel caused Robert Pickel, ceo of ISDA, to speculate that hotel staffers were taking Warren Buffet's comment that derivatives are "weapons of mass destruction" a bit too literally.

Standard & Poor's has hired Sue Harding, former head of global accounting strategy for the equity research group at Credit Suisse First Boston in London and former chair of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association's European accounting committee, as its European chief accountant. This is part of the rating agency's effort to build its accounting expertise in response to increasingly complex accounting rules, according to Clifford Griep, chief credit officer in New York. Derivatives is one of the more opaque areas, said Griep, adding that Harding's expertise in that will be helpful.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi has transferred its credit derivatives trading operation to its securities arm, Mitsubishi Securities, to offer a wider range of instruments to a broader client base. The move has been in the works since last year (DW, 5/4), but the securities firm did not receive a license from the Japanese Financial Services Agency until earlier this summer, according to Nobukazu Saeki, chief manager of the newly-created credit trading department.