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Credit Suisse has upsized Magnolia 2006-6, a synthetic high-grade residential mortgage-backed securities collateralized debt obligation, by over twice its original size.

Deutsche Bank's Vinod Aachi, co-head of equity structuring in the global markets group in Singapore, has now also taken up the reins for the firm's nascent retail unit in Asia.

Duke Funding Management, the collateralized debt obligation arm of USD17.5 billion Ellington Management Group, is pricing a novel cross-currency synthetic CDO with issuer Bear Stearns.

An exchange-traded fund referencing Indian stocks, structured using market access derivatives, has just been launched by Citigroup.

Structured Investment Management, a New York fund structuring boutique launched by former Citigroup managing director Ramesh Menon, has filed its first fund launch with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Rising interest-rates and slumping fund-of-fund returns are driving a dealer race to offer leveraged exposure to single-name or sector-specific hedge funds, in an attempt to win back structured fund investors.

Goldman Sachs last week launched an onshore banking operation in Korea that will offer foreign exchange and interest-rate derivatives in the coming months.

HSBC in New York has lost Mark Overley, head of structured fund products marketing, but also added a raft of staffers including John Tobin, who fills a new spot as managing director and head of equity derivatives trading, from Wachovia.

Growing investor awareness of inflation risk has prompted a spate of inflation investment-product structuring both in Europe and the U.S. Stateside, ABN AMRO and Barclays Capital both launched public Consumer Price Index products last week, while in Europe firms have been structuring inflation notes coupled with equity exposure.

--Cornelia Spiegel, senior v.p. in equities product development and structuring at Lehman Brothers, on whether the firm is looking to buy or create managed hedge-fund accounts.