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BondWeek is the leading news publication for fixed-income professionals, covering new deals, structures, asset-backed securities, industry and market activity.

Trafigura Group, a privately owned commodity trading company headquartered in Lucerne, Switzerland, has hired David Mooney, formerly global head of commodities at Bank of America in New York. Mooney started in London last week in a new position heading power and natural gas trading.

Retail clients are queuing up for products that bet on a recovery in U.K. equities, according to Mario Pytka, head of equity derivatives at Abbey National Financial Products in London. The structured notes give investors more exposure to a fall in equities in return for more participation in any growth.

Barclays Capital is setting up a cross-product structuring desk in Japan as part of its plans to become a major credit derivatives house and is also readying its first third-party CDO in the U.S. In Japan, the firm has hired credit derivatives veteran Ken Koh, managing director of the credit derivatives structuring group at JPMorgan in Tokyo, to spearhead the structuring effort. Koh said he will structure plain-vanilla and hybrid instruments, using credit, interest rate, foreign exchange and equity derivatives.

Stephanie Ruhle, v.p. in credit derivatives sales at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York, has headed uptown to Deutsche Bank to work in a similar position. John Gallagher, spokesman at CSFB in New York, declined comment. Ted Meyer, spokesman at Deutsche Bank in New York, confirmed the hire but declined further comment. Ruhle could not be reached.

The African Development Bank is considering using credit derivatives for the first time to hedge counterparty exposure on its USD5.5 billion (notional) interest rate and foreign exchange swap portfolio. The bank, which is rated AAA by Moody's Investors Service and AA plus by Standard & Poor's, enters interest rate swaps on all of its fixed-rate bond offerings, according to Thiebaut Julin, division manager of capital markets in Paris.

Implied volatility on the short end of the dollar/yen curve shot up last week reaching 9.6% for one-month options last Wednesday before the first strikes against Iraq, up from 9.2% the previous week. One-week options, meanwhile, rocketed to 10.5%, up from 9.5% over the same period, said a trader in New York. Dollar/yen was trading at a several month-high at JPY120.60, up from JPY118.5 the previous week.

Tim Youssef, director in equity derivatives trading at Credit Lyonnais Securities in New York, has left the firm. Christian Lengelle, managing director and head of equity derivatives trading, confirmed the departure but declined further comment. Youssef, who declined comment, joined the French firm last September as part of an effort to kickstart an equity derivatives trading desk in the U.S. (DW, 9/29).

The CMA Group has issued a guaranteed note that uses a combination of constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI) and an options-based structure. The EUR135 million (USD143.4 million) note is linked to the Berklay Global Fund, which is a multi-strategy fund of hedge funds advised by CMA. The product has a 15-year maturity and pays a coupon of 2.4% annually and was sold to insurance groups, according to Alessandro Mauceri, ceo of a research subsidiary of CMA in Geneva.

Foreign exchange options strategists are pitching volatility trades, rather than directional trades, until they get more information about the duration and likely outcome of the Iraqi conflict, according to London-based strategists.

Aozora Bank, with over JPY5.68 trillion (USD48.1 billion) in assets, plans to launch a credit derivatives trading operation in Japan that will eventually offer credit-linked notes and synthetic collateralized debt obligations. "This market is expanding steadily and there are good opportunities for business flows and profit," said Keji Sugimoto, general manager of derivatives and structured finance. Sugimoto said the bank has hired Ishigaki Toshiya, credit trader at UBS Warburg in Tokyo, to kick-start the trading effort. Toshiya, who starts next month, could not be reached.

Macquarie Bank is looking to establish a natural gas derivative trading desk in the U.S. by year-end to complement the gas and oil derivatives business it launched in Europe and Australia in the fourth quarter. "We're relatively pleasantly surprised [by] how much market acceptance there has been for Macquarie so far," said Andrew Downe, head of treasury and commodities in Sydney. "We're looking at putting a trading presence in the States," said Downe, noting that it will likely be in New York but Houston is a possibility.