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Our finance minister of the year is no longer the finance minister – and his decision to leave the post to help his party win an election is Korea's loss. Despite unfinishedbusiness, Jin Nyum's achievements helped Korea win a two-notch upgrade in a global recession. Among central bankers, Australia's Ian Macfarlane leads the field with practical, dynamic and intelligent policy.

A new structure for Macquarie Leasing fits in between traditional asset-backed securitizations and more abstract credit derivatives. It's a first, but why should we care? Because it frees millions of dollars of the company's balance sheet. By Chris Wright.

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"This shocked the market."--Scott Sohn, manager of interest-rate trading at the Korea Development Bank in Seoul, commenting on the reaction to falling interest-rates in Korea causing millions of dollars of mark-to-market losses in swaps books. For complete story, click here.

Evolution Markets, an emissions brokerage firm in New York, plans to make a move into the weather derivatives brokering business in New York and open a London office.

JPMorgan recently hired Alex Park, as an equity derivatives marketer in Hong Kong overlooking the Korean market. He will report to David Chui, v.p. in the equity derivatives group in Hong Kong, when he starts in the coming weeks. Chui confirmed the hire but declined further comment. Joanne Shephard, spokeswoman at JPMorgan in Hong Kong also declined comment.

Sydney-based Basis Capital, a relative-value arbitrage hedge fund in Sydney with USD20 million under management, has recently increased the size of a credit arbitrage trade that uses credit-default swaps and is considering boosting it further. "This trade did work and Basis Capital is continuing to add to the trade," said Steve Howell, cio in Sydney, adding that as the hedge fund continues to receive inflows of cash from investors, it is putting part of that money to work for a trade on Australian packaging firm AMCOR. "There's good relative value and there's still upside return," noted Howell.

BNP Paribas has bulked up its interest-rate derivatives trading operation in Singapore with the appointments earlier this month of Roy Chan, senior dealer in the global exotics group at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore, and Teck Chong Lee and Kang Yeong Woo, both v.p.s in the rates trading group at JPMorgan in Singapore. All three join as senior traders in the interest-rate derivatives trading group and are an expansion to the four-member team. The trio reports to Monty Argawal, head of interest-rate derivatives trading-Asia Pacific in Singapore. "We're trying to capture more of this business," said Argawal, noting that he has expanded the desk as the Asian interest-rate derivatives market is growing.

Bank Austria Creditanstalt plans to start offering equity-linked notes to Polish, Czech and Hungarian investors within the next month. Andreas Fleischmann, head of fixed income and derivatives and financial engineering in Vienna, said the demand for the products comes from investors, such as pension funds, looking for yield enhancement.

Banc of America Securities is looking to hire two quants to cover the global credit derivatives market from both New York and London, according to Leif Andersen, managing director in the firm's quantitative research department. Andersen, who was hired two weeks ago to fill a newly created position in New York covering global credit derivatives, (DW, 4/22), said the new hires would assist him in his research of the burgeoning credit market.

Banc of America Securities plans to merge its equity cash and derivatives departments to form a global equities division and is looking to hire a head of the department. "Once we fill the position, equity financial products, which covers derivatives and convertibles, and the cash equities groups in both the U.K. and the U.S., will fall under one umbrella," said spokesman John Roehm. He declined comment on the reason for the restructuring.

HSBC plans to follow Citibank and Deutsche Bank's lead and issue callable bonds. Ian Banks, treasurer at HSBC in Seoul, said the firm plans to issue the bonds in the coming months. He described this as a logical step after the announcement that the Korea Futures Exchange is going to launch options on Korean Treasury bond futures in May (DW, 2/24). The listed options will be used to hedge over-the-counter derivatives used to structure the bonds.