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Westland/Utrecht Hypotheekbank has made its 28th trade in yen in 2001: a ¥2 billion ($18.03 million) five-year note that pays 0.8%. Yen has been the issuer's most frequently used currency, with US dollar in second place with 16 trades this year. Its yen issues appear in a range of maturities ranging up to 20-year notes, but none is for more than $18 million.

Banco Sabadell, Banco Pastor and nine cajas rurales this week launched the fifth securitisation to take advantage of the Kingdom of Spain's offer of a partial guarantee for securitisations of loans to small and medium sized businesses (PYMEs). Jointly lead managed by Crédit Agricole Indosuez, DG Bank and EBN Banco, the deal was unusual for the asset class in that it did not include a Spanish savings bank.

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter this week issued a research report highlighting worse than expected performance on the first UK student loan securitisation, which it believes will cause a reallocation of payments among the notes. Greenwich NatWest launched the £1.03bn THESIS No 1 deal in April 1998, after buying the loan portfolio from the government.

Charter Communications' "B" tranche is being bid at 100 1/4, up from levels in the 99 3/4 range. A $5 million piece of McCleod USA traded over 100 this week. A bond deal is reportedly helping the levels. A $5-10 million piece of Young Broadcasting traded at 100 1/2.

Netherlands-based life insurance group AEGON has entered an interest-rate swap on the back of a five-year, EUR350 million (USD322 million) bond the company issued last week. Wilma Schouten, capital markets officer in the Hague, said it receives the coupon on the bond, 4.75%, and pays three-month Euribor plus five basis points. The notional size and maturity of the swap is the same as the bond. Three-month Euribor was 4.74% last Wednesday.

Adrian Hyde, managing director and co-head of credit derivatives trading at Chase Manhattan in New York, has left J.P. Morgan, under which most credit derivatives activity from Chase has been subsumed following the merger between the two firms. "I'm assessing my options now," he said, noting that he's looking to stay in credit derivatives but is open to working outside of the banking world, for example, at a hedge fund.

Major credit derivatives market makers, including Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and J.P. Morgan Chase, have unanimously agreed that a regulation in the proposed Basel Capital Adequacy Accord would treat credit derivatives unfavorably compared to bank guarantees and should not be adopted. Over 40 derivatives professionals and three trade organizations met in London last week to thrash out a response to the proposals.

Credit Suisse First Boston last week hired Salomon Smith Barney agency trading head Robert Griffith to head up its expanding credit product trading area as co-head of dollar-denominated interest-rate product trading. Griffith is responsible for all of CSFB's customer and proprietary trading activity in agency and government derivatives, as well as the attendant repo financing of these transactions, according to DW sister publication Bond Week.

Dresdner Kleinwort Benson plans to launch a Japanese credit derivatives trading and structuring book and will hire four to five professionals to staff the effort. It may also hire traders and structurers in other Asian centers such as Hong Kong in the medium term, said Yukiko Omura, managing director, head of global markets-Japan in Tokyo, declining further details on this point. Currently it trades Asian credits out of its London book, but with this move, aims to ramp up its credit derivatives business in Japan.

Cardano Risk Management, a Dutch asset-liability consultancy, plans to enter the U.K. market in the next six months to expand its customer base. The consultancy advises pension funds on which over-the-counter derivatives they should use to hedge the value of their assets, according toTheo Kocken, managing director in Rotterdam. It then invites banks to quote for the business.