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WestLB's Ian Clifton, Asia-Pacific ceo in Tokyo, will be leaving the firm and returning to London to spend more time with his family, according to officials at the German house.

Polly Wong, director in the private investor products group at ABN AMRO in Hong Kong, has left, following a spate of senior departures at the firm in Asia.

Greg Tell, director and head of North American credit options and exotic derivatives trading at Barclays Capital in New York, and Jeff Gentilie, associate director, have gone to the buyside.

AllianceBernstein, a USD618 billion collateralized debt obligation manager, is managing its first investment-grade corporate synthetic CDO.

BNP Paribas has hired Andrew Goldberg, head of foreign exchange options trading at Citigroup in New York.

ACA Capital, a New York-based asset manager, is gearing up to manage a structure arranged on the back of Standard & Poor's revamped rating methodology.

BNP Paribas has reportedly signed up Christos Danias, a v.p. in the collateralized debt obligation group at Credit Suisse in London, in a senior role.

Toronto-based asset management firm Edenbrook Hill Capital, together with broker-dealer Dundee Securities Corporation, has launched a commercial paper conduit into the Canadian market that will buy highly-rated synthetic investments.

This week market makers will start thrashing out how to tackle the increasing problem of credit-default swaps, which wipe out when the underlying debt is restructured.

The degree of trading flexibility given to third-party synthetic collateralized debt obligation managers is tipped to increase.

Credit investors are rushing to unwind long bond, short iTraxx Crossover positions because the play has flipped from a positive carry to negative.

Merrill Lynch has lost Ed Selby, a mid-level credit correlation trader in London.