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Hillmark Capital Management, the firm formed by Trust Company of the West's Mark Gold and Loews Corp.'s Hillel Weinberger, is expected to price its first collateralized loan obligation as early as this month.

--Rick Michalek, senior credit officer at Moody's Investors Service, on the increase in volume of rated collateralized debt obligations.

We were thinking of calling to tell our readers all the juicy gossip this week has brought, but we were afraid our phones might be tapped like Hewlett Packard's or the journalists their employees dared to talk to ­ no civil liberty violations there ­ so we decided to stick to the usual routine...First

Lehman Brothers considered moving its par and distressed trading operations to the public side to accommodate crossover investors and appease interested regulators.

This chart, provided by Citigroup Global Markets, tracks bid-ask prices for par credit facilities that trade in the secondary market.

The following charts show the top five advancers and decliners in terms of % moves in the loan, bond and credit default swap markets for the previous week.

Synthetic collateralized loan obligation transactions are beginning to take off in Australia as domestic banks look to free up balance sheet capital.

Barclays Capital has launched a synthetic collateralized debt obligation which is exclusively referenced to commodity-default swaps.

Amaranth Securities, a USD8 billion hedge fund based in Greenwich, Conn., has reportedly been shopping for a volatility trader.

The American Stock Exchange has listed a novel index designed to measure the performance of companies that may benefit from an ageing population.

BlueBay Asset Management is considering expanding its range of capital-protected credit and fixed-income funds into the U.S. market.