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U.S. equity derivatives dealers are seeing a pickup in interest from hedge funds and prop desks in one-by-two put spreads on the Standard & Poor's 500.

After months of pitching complex structures to squeeze spreads from near all-time tights, structurers are reverting to simple structures focusing more on credit fundamentals.

Standard & Poor's changes to its collateralized debt obligation rating methodology, primarily in the form of lower assumed default rates for investment grade assets rated A and above, are significant and will have a large impact on the CDO market.

A pair of quantitative analysts at Standard & Poor's in London have quit and reportedly jumped to rival agency Dominion Bond Rating Service.

Players were buying short-dated euro/U.S. dollar and sterling/ dollar calls last week as the greenback took a beating in the spot market.

South Africa's Standard Bank has established an onshore fx and rates business in Taiwan as part of the bank's push in the region.

Taiwanese life insurance firms' hefty appetite for global synthetic CDOs is approaching its end, as foreign investment quotas are being reached.

--Mark Adams, president of Edenbrook Hill Capital in Toronto, on launching a commercial paper conduit to buy highly-rated synthetic credit.

Investment bankers cheered the success of Swiss Re's $2bn hybrid capital issue yesterday, hailing its $750m dollar tranche as a reopening of the US institutional market for hybrid securities after the confusion sown by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Jefferies & Co. in New York has hired an equity derivatives trading head and senior trader from Goldman Sachs.

Policy-makers disagree on nature of threat as spectre of economic disorder looms

With soaring oil prices, Asia’s economies must break free from overdependence on imported energy. The real bottlenecks are often domestic