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Five-year credit protection on Sprint Corp. dramatically widened last week, blowing out to 530 basis points Wednesday compared with 350bps the previous week. Much of the widening was related to newspaper articles predicting iPCS Inc, an affiliate of Sprint, is close to filing for bankruptcy, according to a trader in New York. General widening of credit spreads in the telecom sector also affected protection on the name, with Sprint being one of the weakest credits in the industry alongside AT&T Wireless. The January effect, which traditionally sees the buying back of names that had been offloaded at year-end, is beginning to dissipate and buyers for the Sprint credit are not as deep as had previously been thought, he added.

Prudential Securities is structuring its first over-the-counter commodities trade as the firm plans to kick-start an OTC trading operation in softs, energy, such as oil and gas, and grains. In particular, the firm plans to shop commodities swaps and forward contracts to Latin American and Asia-based firms, where Prudential already has a strong client network, said Deborah Bonfield, first v.p. in futures marketing in New York. Offshore and U.S.-based funds investing in these regions will also be targeted to use the products for speculative purposes, she added.

"There will be a bigger and broader market."--David Lai, research team head at Yuanta Core Pacific Securities in Taipei, commenting on the development of a local currency credit derivatives market in Taiwan. For complete story, click here.

UBS Warburg has merged its plain-vanilla and structured credit derivatives business and is thought to be creating one distribution group for all fixed income and credit products, said officials familiar with the plans. Sal Naro, global head of plain vanilla credit derivatives trading, and Mike Connor, global head of structured credit derivatives, will become co-heads of the combined entity. Former UBS staffers and headhunters said co-heads tend to have a short life expectancy in the Hobbesian environment of investment banking and predict that Naro will emerge as sole head of the group. Connor declined comment and Naro was travelling and could not be reached. Spokespersons at the firm did not return calls.

UBS Warburg has hired Ashish Ponda, credit derivatives structurer at Zurich Capital Markets in Singapore, in a similar role for its nascent credit desk in the Lion City. Prior to his stint at Zurich, Ponda headed up the credit derivatives desk for ABN AMRO in Singapore (DW, 6/7). At ABN, he worked alongside Anders Haagen, credit derivatives trader at UBS, who joined last year from ABN to establish its credit derivatives trading operation in Singapore (DW 9/29). "It's like FriendsReunited," said a market official, referring to the popular U.K. Web site which reunites school friends.

The price of one-month euro/dollar options drifted down to 9.4% last Wednesday having traded at 9.6% the previous week while the greenback weakened to USD1.07 in the spot market, from USD1.05. The decline in vol counters traditional market movements, which see vols spike as the euro appreciates, noted a New York-based trader. One reason for the recent fall in vol lies in the slow pace of movements in the spot market. The presence of several large exotic options, which hold big stop losses at levels such as USD1.07 and USD1.08, has also served to stem any volatility increase, he added.

Britannia Building Society has entered a foreign exchange swap to convert a portion of a recent EUR250 million (USD266.375 million) floating-rate offering into a sterling-denominated liability. Jeremy Helme, capital markets manager at Britannia in Leek, U.K., would not reveal the notional size of the swap. He said the purpose of the swap was to achieve a better funding rate. He would not disclose the exchange rate on the transaction.

Bill Armstrong, portfolio manager at Principal Global Investors in Des Moines, Iowa, will swap $504 million, or 7% of the firm's portfolio, from Treasuries and agencies into corporates. He will reduce exposure to Treasuries and agencies by 4% and 3%, respectively. The move will be triggered by a military showdown with Iraq, he says, as the initial reaction to this geopolitical event will be a flight to quality, causing both Treasury and agency bond prices to rally and leading the 10-year Treasury yield to drop to 3.75%. Last Monday, the 10-year Treasury yielded 4%.

Oakland Raiders offensive coordinator Marc Trestman was getting a lot of press in the run up to the Super Bowl, but he was already a familiar name to loyal readers of this space. Back in 1995, Bank Letter interviewed Trestman, a former investment banker who had just taken a job with the San Francisco 49ers, and tried to bait him into saying nasty things about commercial bankers in the Aug. 21 Loose Change. That was back in the day when investment banks were raiding commercial banks to start loan groups. Trestman, however, couldn't be pulled offside.

This chart, provided by Citibank/Salomon Smith Barney Inc., tracks bid-ask prices for par credit facilities that trade in the secondary market. It also tracks facility amounts, ratings, pricing and maturities.

The Texas Permanent School Fund is looking to shift some $170 million out of collateralized mortgage obligations and commercial mortgage-backed securities and into corporates and callable agency debentures. Carlos Veintemillas, portfolio manager of $8.5 billion in taxable fixed-income, says CMOs and CMBS have had a great run, but he believes the economy will improve by year-end, which should cause corporates to outperform CMOs and CMBS. He also argues that corporates will get a boost if dividend taxes are eliminated, because it will encourage companies to look more favorably on issuing equity and cut back on debt issuance. As for callable agencies, Veintemillas says they offer more yield than bulleted agencies, and tend to outperform bullets as interest rates rise. Veintemillas says he will make the trades as the securities he is looking for become available.