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Delegates and speakers were buzzing about the International Swaps and Derivatives Association's credit-default swap settlement protocol, finalized last week.

KBC Alternative Investment Management has been hiring over the last few months and has close to doubled headcount on a year ago.

Market participants, trading volumes and complex strategies in the loan credit-default swap market have heated up this summer, panelists said.

Lehman Brothers has hired two fixed-income marketers for Taiwan coverage as part of its build up in the region.

Merrill Lynch in New York has hired Joe Farrell, an equity volatility trader at hedge fund giant Millennium Management.

Macquarie Bank's Matthew Long, head of equity derivative sales for Asia in Hong Kong, has left the firm.

Merrill Lynch has hired Maurice Nadjar-Primack from Credit Suisse as head of emerging market equity trading for Russia, Eastern Europe and South Africa, including cash, derivatives and financing transactions.

Merrill Lynch is retooling its Asian derivatives operation.

Gerald Corrigan, managing director at Goldman Sachs and a former president and ceo of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was asked about Warren Buffet's famous description of credit derivatives as financial weapons of mass destruction.

Synthetic asset-backed securities now make up the bulk of the structured finance market, said Rajiv Kamilla, v.p. in structured products trading at Goldman Sachs in New York.

--Rajiv Kamilla, v.p. in structured products trading at Goldman Sachs, speaking at last week's Credit Default Swaps & LCDS Conference in New York on the ability to express both positive and negative views on asset-backed securities via CDS.