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Jefferies & Co. last week hired Michael George, formerly a senior derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs, as senior v.p. of derivatives trading focusing on technology derivatives and index products.

IXIS Corporate & Investment Banking is bulking up its sales effort with several hires in fixed-income and equity derivatives in the region.

Merrill Lynch has continued its sales hiring spree in Asia this year with two new additions.

David Reilly and Ujjaval Desai, managing directors and global co-heads of CLOs, CSOs and CDOs at JPMorgan in London, have quit to launch an asset management business.

In Item 1115 of the SEC's Regulation AB, published in final form in December 2004, the SEC has taken big strides in coming to grips with swap agreements.

Structured equity desks, forced to buy or sell volatility to balance books when the underlying equity market moves, are getting caught in a chicken and egg situation where their own hedging activity is beginning to drive the market.

Singapore's OCBC Bank is preparing to launch a credit derivatives trading desk.

A glut of collateralized debt obligations has been downgraded by Moody's Investors Service this week after the rating agency stepped up its analysis of underlying credit quality across synthetic structures.

The Royal Bank of Scotland in London has hired Stuart Hall, an equity derivatives trader at Lehman Brothers, in a new role as head of index exotics trading.

Product Innovations Limited, a U.K. structured products boutique, launched a note linked to a basket of global real-estate investment trusts and indices last week.

Washington Square Investment Management is eyeing a second issue of an innovative managed, long/short synthetic collateralized debt obligation it closed only last week.

Players were snapping up short-dated U.S. dollar/Brazil puts last week after Brazil's Central Bank surprised the market Tuesday by selling USD400 million through USD/BRL currency swaps to rescue the falling real.