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BondWeek is the leading news publication for fixed-income professionals, covering new deals, structures, asset-backed securities, industry and market activity.

BondWeek is the leading news publication for fixed-income professionals, covering new deals, structures, asset-backed securities, industry and market activity.

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein has hired David Singer, group of seven forwards trader at Bank of America in Singapore, as a short-term interest rate trader for its money markets group in the Lion City. Prior to his stints at BofA and ING Financial Markets, Singer was the head of short-term interest rate trading at Standard Chartered in Singapore (DW, 8/25/02).

One-month implied volatility on the euro/dollar pair shot up to 10.75% last Wednesday from 10% at the end of the preceding week. The climb came on the back of a sharp dollar gain against the euro in the spot market. The dollar traded at USD1.08 last Wednesday, compared with USD1.097 the previous Friday and USD1.088 the Wednesday before, according to a New York-based trader.

Corporates and real money funds have been lapping up dollar/yen options over the past week as the yen threatens to strengthen further against the greenback and volatility on the currency pair spikes. Volumes in dollar/yen options have been around 50% higher in the past week compared to a few months ago, while customer flows have almost doubled, according to one options trader. The big question on the currency pair is whether the Bank of Japan will step in to support the dollar, noted another trader. Last Wednesday the yen was trading at a several month low of JPY116, compared with JPY117 the week before.

Deutsche Bank has increased the number of currencies on which it structures interest rate products with varying maturities. Rashid Zuberi, director in interest rate derivatives in London, said it now offers the notes on the euro, Danish kroner and Polish zloty in addition to the dollar.

Derivatives houses including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch have started structuring capital guaranteed products on individual hedge funds and some are moving on to options on single funds. Most of the early structures have used a threshold technique known as Constant Proportional Portfolio Insurance (CPPI), but more firms are now starting to look at non-path dependent option trades, according to bankers. Options on single hedge funds are much harder to price and risk manage because there is not a pool of diversified managers and strategies to lower the volatility, notedMike Fullalove, head of origination for the structured solutions group at Merrill in London.

Caisse d'Amortissement de la Dette Sociale, the French agency responsible for repaying social security debt, has converted a seven-year USD100 million medium-term note into a euro-dominated liability. Christophe Frankel, cfo, said the company chose to issue this bond in dollars due to investor demand for debt dominated in this currency. It then carried out the swap since all its liabilities are euro-denominated.

Asset managers are looking into structuring capital guaranteed products with credit derivatives and collateralized debt obligations--rather than zero-coupon bonds--to leave more capital available to purchase options, offering investors more upside participation. Andrew Irvine, head of structured investment products at Investec Financial Products, said it is considering producing such a product.

Elliot Management, a New York-based hedge fund manager with USD3 billion in assets, has hired Steve Kasoff, high-yield collateralized debt obligation staffer at Deutsche Bank in New York, to set up a structured credit trading operation. The trading is likely to be done through its Elliot Associates hedge fund, according to officials familiar with the move. Kasoff declined comment.

JPMorgan has hired Wolfgang Schubert, a credit derivatives staffer at Goldman Sachs in New York, as v.p. in structuring collateralized debt obligation transactions. Schubert reports to Thomas Majewski, v.p. in in the same group, according to Michael Dorfsman, spokesman in New York. Majewski did not respond to messages and Schubert declined comment.