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The Royal Bank of Scotland has reeled in a fixed income marketing team from TD Securities in Tokyo in a bid to bulk up capabilities in Japan.

Goldman Sachs has repudiated press reports claiming that chief executive Hank Paulson had ordered the bank's executives to stop using Goldman Sachs equity to back hostile takeover bids.

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

The Loan Syndications and Trading Association has warned that the large logjam in Safety-Kleen litigation proceeds stuck in the marketplace threatens to harm liquidity and transparency of the loan market.

Farzin Pourmokhtar, head of product management at The Royal Bank of Scotland in London, has quit the firm after nine months. He joined RBS from Bank of America (DW, 7/1) where he worked under Alex Bernand, who recently jumped to Deutsche Bank. Credit officials tipped him to follow Bernand to the German firm. Pourmokhtar's role encompassed structured credit and equity products and he reported to Vincent Dahinden, head of structured products and the equity products group, who did not return calls by press time.

Eric Miller, head of structured products sales at ABN AMRO in New York, has left the firm. He is reported to be heading to another investment bank to head its equity structured products desk. His exact destination could not be determined and Miller could not immediately be reached. Patrick Phalon, ABN spokesman, did not immediately return a phone message.

Bank of America has nabbed Mayur Jethwa, a senior credit-default swap trader at Credit Suisse in London who is considered to be one of the top traders in the banks and financials sector. An official familiar with the situation said he left the U.S house this week.

Growth of index-linked credit default swaps trading has surpassed that of single-name CDS trading, according to a Fitch Ratings report.

Talk about a Knock Out deal.

--Stephen King, head of synthetic ABS CDOs at Barclays Capital, on the growing popularity of index-linked CDS trading in the asset-backed market.

Moody's Investors Service is trying to head off more criticism about the effect its new ratings will have on collateralized loan obligations, issuing responses to the comments levied by market participants.

Credit Suisse First Boston's Leveraged Investment Group (LIG) set up a London platform to manage leveraged loans, mezzanine debt and high-yield bonds.