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SAC Capital Management has hired Colin Rust, former proprietary equity derivatives trader at Lehman Brothers in New York, in a similar role. Rust declined comment. Peter Nussbaum, legal counsel in Stamford, Conn., did not return calls. SAC is the world's 33rd largest hedge fund manager, according to Institutional Investor's hedge fund rankings.

Pricing-orientated payoff computer languages form the vast majority of existing financial product language implementations, but they face serious limitations for valuing structured products on past, present, and future dates. A new class of context-neutral contract computer languages offers key properties to overcome the challenges of time travel.

"We are not launching futures. We are licensing an exchange to do this."--Lars Hamich, executive director at Dow Jones Indexes, commenting on the firm's strategy for developing a credit derivatives futures markets, for complete story, click here.

The two major credit derivatives index providers, TRAC-X and iBoxx, are both attempting to launch futures, but are attacking the project in opposite ways. iBoxx is setting up two consultative groups, one for dealers and one for investors, to come up with the ideal future, whereas Dow Jones Indexes, the administrator of TRAC-X, plans to leave the product development to licensed exchanges. Both groups have a similar timeframe, with iBoxx going for the first-half of the year and Dow Jones looking at either the June or September roll date for credit derivatives transactions. Neither, however, would name exchanges they might use or detail likely contract specifications.

Nationwide Building Society has entered interest rate swaps to convert two recent fixed-rate U.S. dollar notes into synthetic floating-rate liabilities. Sarah Hill, senior trader in the treasury, declined to reveal how much of the issues it converted, but said, "The two fixed rate issues were swapped back into floating to fit our current funding profile."

It may be too early in the game, but the trend currently seems to be one of "calendar creep."

Analysts expect Douglas Foshee, ceo of El Paso Corp., to disclose asset-selling plans at a long-range planning meeting scheduled for this week.

Increased demand for European commercial mortgage-backed securities has lead to tight funding levels on new issuance as well as spread tiering between deals backed by U.K. and European assets.

Securitizations in the European insurance sector should become more common in the coming year, say London-based analysts and bankers.

The Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau-sponsored true sale initiative (TSI) should yield its debut deal in the first quarter, says Dieter Glüder, head of securitization in Frankfurt.

Guillaume Malle, a credit salesman at Goldman Sachs in New York, recently left the firm.

The focus last week was again on the primary market, as issuers pushed to sell deals before the end of the year and before an anticipated slowdown toward the middle of this week.