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JPMorgan recently hired Jason Sippel, director and structurer at Gen Re Securities in Tokyo, as a v.p. in the credit and rates markets group in Tokyo. He reports to Ashley Bacon, Asian head of rates markets in Tokyo, who said Sippel's role within the group is still under discussion. "We're still figuring out his position. He's a talented guy, there's a lot of jobs that he could do." He added, Sippel is an opportunistic hire and may focus on either fixed-income or credit derivatives products.

Moody's Investors Service has hired Dan Chen, an assistant v.p. in JPMorgan's global portfolio management and technology group in New York, to join its synthetic collateralized debt obligation ratings team. He joined the 17-member team two weeks ago and is filling a newly created position, according to Chen. He reports to Jeremy Gluck, head of resecuritization market value products.

Société Générale Asia and Barclays Capital Asia recently started marketing credit-linked notes with embedded interest-rate products for the first time in the region, because yields on traditional CLNs have fallen, according to officials at the firms. "The interest-rate component adds extra juice," noted an official at SG Australia.

Five-year credit-default protection on AOL Time Warner widened about 60 basis points in the wake of weak investor demand for its recent USD6 billion bond offering. Credit derivatives traders reported that New York-based AOL, the world's largest Internet and media company, was among the most heavily traded names last week as hedge funds and investment banks looked to buy protection on the bonds. Spreads on AOL widened to about 160bps last Wednesday from about 100bps on April 2 the day before the company's bond offering. "The bonds just haven't done that well. Spreads have widened on the bonds more than anyone thought they would," said one trader. "They've been really trading off and people are buying protection."

Alan Burnell, head of European government bonds at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, has joined Barclays Capital as a managing director and head of euro swaps and government bonds. He will report to Eric Bommensath, global head of fixed income.

It was Samuel Johnson who said "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Trading losses may not be up there with being hanged in a fortnight, but they can certainly concentrate the mind.

Legal & General Group is planning to use interest-rate swaps to hedge upcoming five-year bond issues. Although the company has no immediate plans to issue five-year notes, it floats them on a frequent ongoing basis, said John Whorwood, treasurer in London. He said the insurer's issuance would depend on its mortgage-lending activity, but should total approximately GBP200 million (USD287 million) this year. The firm typically only enters swaps on its five-year bonds because these fund its mortgage-lending business.

Buyers were seeking high-strike caps and out-of-the-money cap/floor straddles last week because of a belief that volatility would increase in the front end of the curve. Traders said that the activity was likely driven by customer flow. Buyers are banking on increasing volatility in the short end because of the beginnings of an economic recovery coupled with uncertainty in the Middle East and the rise in oil prices.

Stanfield Capital Partners is preparing to launch a structured investment vehicle (SIV) that will be able to issue up to USD4 billion in term debt and use derivatives to manage interest-rate and foreign exchange risk, according to an investor who has seen preliminary marketing materials. Officials at Stanfield Capital in New York declined all comment.

Volkswagen has issued a PLZ100 million (USD24 million) bond and converted the proceeds into euros via an fx swap as a cheaper way of raising capital. In the swap, the company pays zlotys and receives euros, but Clement Denks, treasurer, declined to detail the exchange rates. He said VW entered the swap because it was offered an arbitrage opportunity via a reverse enquiry from Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley is also the counterparty to the swap and is one of VW's relationship banks.

Lombard Odier, which manages E1.5 billion in European corporate credit, is taking a step back from the market to gauge the expected flood of new issuance, after which it will begin to look at the primary market. Rodrigo Araya, corporate credit portfolio manager based in Amsterdam, says the market may come under pressure from large amounts of issuance and that he is waiting for spreads to widen out before getting back in to the market. He would like to see more issuance from the industrial sector to gain some diversifaction in his portfolio. "If [the issue] is interesting it's gone and your allocation is very low," he says of the current state of the primary market.

Some Loan Market Week surveys have been tougher than others to track down despite efforts by traders to persuade investors to turn them in. When a staffer tried to get one buysider to respond, he wasn't too enthused to vote for anyone, but on second thought he decided there could be some opportunity in it. He jokingly shared his strategy for selecting desks to fill the top spots. "I figure I should just auction off the slots--first place goes to the bank that buys me a round of golf, second for a day at a spa, and third for some great cigars," he quipped.