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Players were snapping up short-dated upside and downside euro puts this week after the single currency experienced dramatic swings in value against the U.S. dollar.

Capmark Investments, the newly-formed USD10.8 billion asset manager formerly known as General Motors Acceptance Corp. Institutional Advisors, is managing its first hybrid collateralized debt obligation.

HSBC in Asia has just wrapped a first-of-a-kind medium-term note linked to two credit indices and incorporating constant proportion portfolio insurance.

Synthetic collateralized debt obligations containing pockets of emerging market credit are gaining ground in Asia as investors look for alternatives to traditional products to meet yield targets.

Credit market participants are often interested in the ability to compute prices of non-standard single tranches on index portfolios such as iTraxx and CDX.

Burgeoning demand for exchange-listed structured finance vehicles looks set to spill into the credit derivatives arena.

Lehman Brothers has lost a raft of sales and trading staffers from European equity derivatives.

Merrill Lynch has landed a head of EMEA structured credit marketing in the form of Adam Dixon, latterly heading structured credit marketing to German, Austrian and Swiss financial institutions at JPMorgan in London.

JPMorgan has set up a new business unit focused on developing structured products linked to alternative investment funds.

Credit-default swap spreads across corporate and emerging markets widened dramatically last week after a worse-than-expected U.S. inflation report led to new concerns about interest-rate tightening and triggered panic protection buying.