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* Just a week after it launched ELOC 6, Morgan Stanley has started work on the seventh issue from its European Loan Conduit programme. Its next deal will be secured by just two loans, one secured on a large property in Berkeley Square in Mayfair, London and one on 13 different properties, including shops and office buildings, throughout the UK.

UBS Warburg this week completed a Eu1bn collateralised debt obligation backed by an unmanaged portfolio of investment grade credits selected by UBS Principal Finance. Lead managed by Schroder Salomon Smith Barney (books) and UBS Warburg, the deal is the first of its type that UBS Principal Finance in Europe has launched, although its counterpart in the US has a regular programme of issuance.

Dealers reported ComDisco bank debt traded at 79.50-80 shortly after the company announced it had filed for bankruptcy early in the week. Pillowtex Corp. paper, after failing to trade in an auction last week, traded on Friday at 35. Approximately $36 million was swapped. Finova paper was flipped this morning at 92.375 from 92 in a $5 million trade.

Zack Vora, head of interest rate products at Commerzbank in Hong Kong, recently resigned and the German firm is planning to restructure its interest-rate derivatives operations in Singapore and Hong Kong in the wake of the move.

ABN AMRO's global heads of credit derivatives trading and structuring resigned from the firm two weeks ago, reportedly after an ultimatum they had issued to senior management expired unheeded. Regis Copinot, global head of credit derivatives trading, and Fabrice Haddad, global head of credit derivatives structuring, are believed to have carried out a threat to resign if senior management refused to merge credit derivatives with cash credit trading. Copinot and Haddad declined comment.

Foreign fund managers have recently been putting on bond versus swap spread plays in the Singapore dollar-denominated market to take advantage of an expected widening in the spread between the term repo rate and swap spreads. "It's one of the oldest trades in the book," said Bryan Yap, head of interest-rate swaps, Asia, at Deutsche Bank in Singapore, noting that its only recently become feasible in the local market. Interest-rate swappers declined to detail the notional size of typical transactions and Yap could not be reached for comment on this point.

A former Salomon Smith Barney co-head of Latin American equity derivatives has won USD550,000 in a New York Stock Exchange arbitration claim that the firm did not pay an agreed bonus and wrongfully terminated him. Ricardo Litvak, who now works at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a subsidiary of Credit Suisse First Boston, claimed SSB "induced him to take a job, but did not pay the agreed upon compensation," according to the NYSE arbitration decision. Litvak also claimed the firm took credit for his investment ideas and wrongfully terminated him, the decision states. The claim, filed March 3, 1999, sought compensatory damages for more than USD1.5 million, plus punitive damages, costs and fees, according to the arbitration decision.

Jean-Marie Barreau, a senior equity derivatives marketer at Société Générale in New York, has left the firm. He was head of equity derivatives marketing and sales before he was assigned to set up an office for equity derivatives marketing to high-net-worth individuals in San Francisco, according to an official at the firm. Barreau left the firm last month and could not be reached.

Bankgesellschaft Berlin plans to issue structured notes with embedded over-the-counter equity options aimed at German corporates looking to earn an above money market interest-rate and are willing to take on market risk. Karsten Hesser, senior trader in the structured retail and institutional products group in Berlin, said the notes will give investors either an above market interest-rate or upside participation in the Dow Jones EURO STOXX 50.