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The opening up of the French market has been one of the great success stories of the European syndicated loan market over the past three years. Once a country where borrowers rarely used the loan market and when they did they stuck closely to their domestic house banks, France has become one of the most important sources of business for European syndicated loans teams. Toby Fildes reports.

In a remarkably short space of time, France has become one of the most important leveraged finance markets in Europe. Dealflow has been strong this year, partly as a result of the large French companies continuing to restructure and spin off non-core businesses but also because of the high number of international private equity sponsors active in France. Toby Fildes reports.

ABN AMRO is expected to launch this week the first credit-linked note using the weightings of the iBoxx index, a European fixed income index jointly complied by seven market makers. The CLN is referenced to a portfolio of the index's 50 largest corporates by outstanding debt, according to officials familiar with the note. Officials at ABN declined comment.

BNP Paribas has hired Mark Alexandridis, head of credit derivatives at Gen Re Securities, as head of its North American credit derivatives business in New York, where he is in charge of all sales, trading and structuring within the region, according to a BNP official. Alexandridis started at the French bank last month.

BNP Paribas has lost three more of its equity derivatives professionals, this time to CDC IXIS Capital Markets and Banc of America Securities. Jason Megson, v.p. in single stock trading, and Michael Nevin, v.p. in equity derivatives sales, have joined CDC and Raj Malhotra, v.p. in index trading, has joined BofA. All have taken similar positions, according to officials familiar with the situation. The firm had already lost Jim Xu, an equity derivatives trader, (DW, 5/19) Kent Oz, head of financial institutional sales, (DW, 5/3) and Vuk Bulajic, head of U.S. equity derivatives (DW, 4/29).

Noranda, a Canadian metals producer with approximately USD4 billion in sales last year, is considering entering an interest-rate swap on the back of a recent bond deal to convert a fixed-rate liability into a floating-rate one. Michael Frilegh, v.p., treasurer in Toronto, said he would like to enter a swap where the company would pay floating and receive fixed. However, with yields on Treasuries and swaps so low, he is preferring to keep the liability in fixed-rate for now and may enter a swap in the coming months if rates increase.

CCF Capital Management two weeks ago entered into a one-year USD50 million (notional) interest-rate swap in which it receives a fixed rate of 2.34% and pays one-month U.S. dollar LIBOR. CCF, a member of the HSBC Group, was approached by a bank in London, which was looking to enter the swap, according to Christophe Besson, head of derivatives and futures in Paris. He said the counterparty, which he declined to name, may have been looking to hedge an underlying exposure. Besson declined all further comment.

Deutsche Asset Management Australia, the Antipodean fund management arm of Deutsche Bank with USD40 billion under management, is in the early stages of studying the possibility of purchasing its first synthetic collateralized debt obligation and boosting its investment in credit derivatives for its AUD5 billion (USD2.87 billion) fixed-income portfolio. "Credit derivatives are a good way to improve the diversification of the underlying portfolio," said Bill Bovingdon, head of fixed-income in Sydney.

Steven Reiter, formerly head of short-term interest-rate options at Citibank in New York, has relocated to London as head of global foreign exchange options. Reiter replaces Jack Jeffrey, who left Citibank earlier this year to become London-based chief executive of The EBS Partnership, an electronic fx trading platform owned by a consortium of 12 banks. Also trading places is Anders Henrikson, former head of fx options at Citibank in New York, who left the bank a few weeks ago to join the corporate treasury department at Nokia in Geneva, according to Citibank fx officials. Reiter has been replaced internally as head of short-term interest-rate options by Bill Kelly in New York. Kelly and Jeffrey did not return calls.

Derivatives houses in India, including Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan, have held informal talks with the Reserve Bank of India with hopes to launch interest-rate options. "There's a need for these products," said Rajiv Baruah, co-head of Indian global markets at Deutsche Bank in Mumbai. He added that the regulator could allow them in six to 12 months. Srinivasan Varadarajan, treasurer at JPMorgan in Mumbai, agreed that the options could be introduced next year. Investors would likely use the options to reduce hedging costs with caps, floors and swaptions. Baruah noted that a year or two after the products launch, the market could rival the current size of the interest-rate swap market. Varadarajan estimated the swaps market to be USD40-50 million per day, but said that had doubled over the last month as investors convert their bond holdings to floating notes.

As traders anticipated euro/dollar spot would climb to parity or higher and implied volatility reached approximately 12.9% last week, foreign exchange strategists were recommending knockouts to various users of fx options. On Wednesday, when spot was trading at USD0.99, Lehman Brothers was recommending a switching-knockout trade, primarily for speculators, which consists of a one-month euro call struck at USD0.995, where the knockout is at USD1.0250 for the first two weeks and at USD0.975 in the following two weeks. The end user benefits in this trade if the euro does not trade at or above 1.0250 in the first two weeks and does not trade at or below USD0.975 in the following two weeks. It is based on the view that euro/dollar spot will first enter a consolidation phase before re-entering its upward trend, saidEric Ohayon, head of fx structuring at Lehman. The upfront premium for this trade is 60 basis points over the reference spot rate, compared with a one-month euro call at USD0.995, priced at 125bps over that rate, he said.

Husky Energy, Canada's second-largest oil and gas company in terms of production, has entered into three interest-rate swaps to convert a fixed-rate obligation into synthetic floating-rate liabilities. Mike D'Aguiar, treasurer in Calgary, Alberta, said the company entered three separate USD50 million swaps in which it receives the 6.25% coupon it owes on a recent bond and pays an average of six-month LIBOR plus 88 basis points. The swaps match the 10-year duration of a USD400 million bond Husky issued earlier this month.