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Bayerische Landesbank plans to securitize between EUR1-2 billion (USD850 million-USD1.7 billion) of its commercial mortgage portfolio using derivatives and is currently looking for an investment bank to lead manage and structure the deal. Klaus Distler, first v.p. and head of securitization in Munich, said Bayerische is preparing this deal to reduce regulatory capital and remove assets from its balance sheet. It has opted for a synthetic transaction because it is cheaper and quicker than a cash deal.

The Central Bank of Hungary's recent move to widen the band in which the forint trades to 15% from 2.25% is seen as a step towards the development of a liquid derivatives market, according to Budapest market watchers.

Credit Lyonnais has revived its role as a structurer of warrants on baskets of B shares listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock markets, four years after becoming the first firm to put together such a deal. Eddie Tam, director, equity derivatives in Hong Kong, said the move is in response to a resent surge in daily turnover. He believes the market for warrants on B shares has lain dormant since CL structured the first trade in 1997 because of poor liquidity.

Jackson Chou, credit derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo, has recently left the firm. Richard Thomas, managing director at Morgan Stanley in Tokyo, said Chou has resigned, declining further comment. Chou could not be reached.

Norwegian export credit agency Eksportfinans plans to issue callable Japanese yen-denominated medium-term notes and convert them to synthetic dollar floating-rate liabilities using cross-currency interest-rate swaps. Anders Bruun-Olsen, senior v.p. and head of the funding department in Oslo, said the agency has USD800 million of funding left to raise before year-end. The agency plans to tap the Japanese market to take advantage of strong demand for triple-A rated debt and because it has a good reputation in Japan.

Convertible bonds are corporate bonds which pay the holder regular coupons and may be converted into the underlying shares at the holder's discretion. Here we focus on their exposure to the credit of the issuer. At low equity prices, when the equity optionality is worth little, the convertible is essentially a pure bond and it is clearly correct to price (i.e. discount cash flows) with the full credit spread of the issuer. However, it is generally held that a company's ability to issue stock is not strongly influenced by its credit rating. Accordingly, the value contributed to the bond by its conversion rights should not be subject to the same risky discounting as the fixed payments.

Tullett & Tokyo Liberty plans to expand its recently launched credit derivatives brokerage desk in Singapore in the coming months, said John Rabey, manager of the Asia-Pacific credit derivatives desk. The firm will likely double headcount on the desk to six if volumes continue to grow. Tullett brokers protection on Asian credits, including Japanese and Australian names, from the Singapore desk. Credit default swap trading makes up 99% of the desk's business, he added.

Life imitating art...A firm that produces fake money for American film studios has been ordered to hand over its phoney cash after people successfully spent it. The U.S. Secret Service, which enforces anti-forgery laws, ordered Independent Studio Services to stop printing the notes and get back all the ones it had produced so that they could be destroyed. The move comes after some of the cash got into the hands of the general public after US$1 billion was blown up during a film shoot in Las Vegas.

Conning Assert Management, a money management firm in Hartford, Conn., has been dipping in to stable, non-telco credits in recent weeks in the new issue market. Among the trades, the firm applied for $50 million and got $20 million of Alcoa 6.5% of '11 ( A1/A+). Karen Kelleher, senior portfolio manager, says the 110 basis points over treasuries price is quite wide for such a stable company, which would have traded at 60-80 over 2 or 3 years ago. She believes spreads will narrow, and cites the good fundamentals for the aluminum industry.

Mitchell Capital Management swapped out of some treasuries two weeks ago by adding agencies and corporate bonds. The firm's treasuries allocation was cut by 8%, because government bonds have been bid up too much in value, says Ken Green, portfolio manager in Kansas City, Mo. However, he is comfortable with his current treasury allocation and does not plan to decrease it further.

Westwood Capital Management, a Dallas-based money manager, has been buying longer maturity off-the-run U.S. treasuries as yields climbed over 6% late last month. Portfolio manager Mark Freeman says he increased his Treasury allocation by 2% in the move. Freeman, who manages $700 million in taxable fixed income, may look to make further increases to his position in off-the-runs maturing in '23 and '16 if the economy appears to be stabilizing, indicating that the Federal Reserve has come close to the end of its easing cycle. He says the expected modest, rather than drastic, drop-off in consumer spending rates would be one important sign of such stabilization. He would finance the move by using new cash and selling intermediate-term treasuries.