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David Eline, v.p. and senior marketer at Bank of America in London, has joined creditex in a similar role. Eline, who joined two weeks ago, will market the product to European customers, according to Brad McKinnon, head of the London office. Eline reports to McKinnon.

Citadel Investments, a Chicago-based hedge fund with $6-7 billion in assets, has hired Vince Kaminski, founder and head of Enron's research group in Houston. Kaminski, a quantitative heavyweight known as "the genius" within Enron, referred questions to Scott Rafferty, an investor relations official, who declined all comment.

TD Securities has hired Michael Chacos as v.p. and director in credit structuring in London. Chacos was previously at Bank of America in the structured credit products group. He will start at the end of the month and report to Charles Colbourne and Hal Holappa, co-heads of credit derivatives in London and also to Joe Hegener, head of high-yield credit derivatives in New York, according to Colbourne. At BofA, Chacos reported to Paul van der Maas, managing director and head of structured credit products in London, who declined comment.

Credit Suisse First Boston has hired Joe McHugh, a credit derivatives flow trader at Deutsche Bank in New York, in a similar role, according to a market official. McHugh, who left Deutsche Bank about a week ago and will join CSFB on June 10, will report to David Carlson, managing director and head of North American Credit derivatives.

One-week to one-month U.S. dollar/yen implied volatility rose sharply Tuesday afternoon on the expectation that the Bank of Japan would intervene in the yen--which happened Wednesday morning at a price of JPY123.70. One-week implied vol rose to 11% from 9% Tuesday and one-month implied vol climbed to 9.75% from 7.95% the week before. One-year implied vol did not move as much over the week, rising to 9.23% from 9.08% because investors were buying options based on expectations of short-term spot moves.

XL Capital Assurance, a financial guarantor, has recently added three securitization veterans to its growing New York operation. David Blakeslee, v.p. in the mortgage and asset-backed securities analytics group at Merrill Lynch, joined as v.p. in its analytics group; Scott Madden, assistant v.p. public finance in its structured single risk group, and Kate Manion, assistant v.p. in its surveillance and research group, both joined from MBIA where they were assistant vice presidents. Blakeslee will do quantitative analysis and modeling of structured finance products, reporting to Hong Jiang, v.p. analytics group. Madden will focus on new business and underwriting, reporting to Wynne Morriss, senior managing director in the structured single risk group. Manion will focus on surveillance for consumer ABS, franchise loans and CDO deals, reporting to Dick Heberton, managing director.

Emanuel Derman, managing director and head of the quantitative risk strategies group in the firm-wide risk department in New York, is leaving Goldman Sachs next month. Derman is "one of the most prominent quantitative analysts in the options area," according to Andrew Harmstone, head of European derivatives and quantitative research at Lehman Brothers in London. Derman also won the International Association of Financial Engineers' coveted Financial Engineer of the Year award in 2000.

First Chicago Tokio Marine Financial Products is looking to issue at least two synthetic collateralized debt obligations in Japan by year-end, according to Takeshi Yoshikawa, ceo in Tokyo. Yoshikawa said the firm completed its first CDO in Japan in March, a USD300 million deal, and believes FCTM will issue additional CDOs of up to USD500 million. He continued that the portfolio will likely contain Japanese credits as well as global names to insure diversity, but will be denominated in dollars.

Financial institutions in the U.S. are set to pull in billions of dollars of business providing capital guaranteed funds backed by over-the-counter swaps with insurance companies. Both Deutsche Bank and Salomon Smith Barney are working on products that will use derivatives with insurance companies to provide guarantees, according to officials at both firms. Jean-Marie Barreau, head of fund derivatives at Deutsche Bank in London, said the market could grow from around zero now to USD5 billion in the first year and USD10-15 billion the following year.

ING Financial Markets is planning to put itself back on the equity derivatives map in Asia by re-establishing a desk in Hong Kong in the coming months, according to market officials. "They're coming back into the market," noted one official, adding that ING had pulled the plug on its equity operation during the Asian financial crisis.

Algometrics, a London-based hedge fund, is entering the credit default swaps market for its USD33 million proprietary equity fund, Algometrics Cayman. Stephen Smith, managing director, said Algometrics is also entering the market on behalf of its investors. The firm trades for approximately three outside funds. Growing liquidity in the credit-default swaps market is spurring Smith to use the over-the-counter credit instruments. Currently, the fund only uses exchange-traded equity derivatives and over-the-counter equity options. "If you're trading the stock, credit derivatives are the way into the next tier of equity risk," Smith said. Algometrics has done some experimental credit-default swaps trading and is building a system to use for trading.

KBC Asset Management has entered an equity swap to guarantee a new product, and it plans to enter a similar swap this week. The three-and-a-half-year maturity fund, dubbed KBC EquiPlus, is split into three equal periods. Investors receive a 0.5% coupon for each of the 20 stocks that end the period above the initial level of the fund, said Lode Roose, product development manager in Brussels.