Search results for

General Re Financial Products has hired Bjorn Flesaker, senior managing director-head of derivatives research and front office systems at Bear Stearns in New York, in the new position of global head of research and analytics. Flesaker referred calls to Mark Byrne, ceo, who did not return calls. Flesaker spent over five years at Bear Stearns, having joined from the then Union Bank of Switzerland (DW, 1/15/96) and prior to that was at Merrill Lynch.

Elektrizitätswerk Dahlenburg has entered a precipitation swap with Element Reinsurance in which the electric utility receives a pay out if precipitation rises above an agreed level during the summer. Rainfall has a direct impact on Elektrizitätswerk Dahlenburg's revenue because many of the utility's customers are farmers using electric power for irrigation during periods of low rainfall. The swap is designed to hedge against a fall in revenue during periods of high precipitation, according to Nicholas Ward, head of new markets at Spectron, which brokered the transaction. Ward declined to detail the size of the deal.

TheInternational Swaps and Derivatives Association over the next several weeks will canvass credit derivative dealers, hedgers and investors with a view to revising so-called 'soft' credit event definitions in credit derivative documentation. Bob Pickel, executive director and ceo of ISDA in New York, told DW there will be changes to the credit event definitions, declining to put a timeframe on the move. The issue has been a focus of discussion as the synthetic CDO and credit default swap markets have grown but raised eyebrows recently when Moody's Investors Service and Deutsche Bank engaged in a skirmish--via conflicting research reports--on the potential magnitude and probability of soft credit events, according to market professionals.

Ronald Neumunz, head of a specialized team marketing fixed income, foreign exchange and derivative products in emerging markets to hedge funds and private banks at J.P. Morgan Chase in London, has joined investment consultant LJH Global Investments in London. Neumunz takes the new position of managing director, heading up the firm's first European operation.

J.P. Morgan Chase plans to storm into a top three position in Asian equity market league tables within the next three years and hopes to differentiate itself by promoting innovative structures, such as equity-linked products, equity derivatives and credit derivatives. Michiel Steenman, Hong Kong-based head of equity capital markets for Asia Pacific, acknowledged the firm is bulking up late in the game, but added that Chinese deals are expected to account for a large portion of new Asian business.

LG Capital, a Korean credit card and financing firm, is considering issuing a cross-border asset-backed security and likely will enter a swap to convert the proceeds back into Korean won, according to an official at the firm in Seoul. LG is talking with several investment banks about the ABS issue, he said, declining to name them.

Lehman Brothers in New York has hiredMichael Ladas, v.p., strategic equity transactions at Deutsche Bank in New York, as v.p., senior corporate equity derivatives marketer. Ladas is responsible for marketing equity derivative products to corporate clients in the U.S. and replaces Paul Rosica, who recently transferred to Lehman's telecom equity capital markets group. Russell Hackmann, senior v.p., head of corporate equity derivatives in New York, said Lehman conducted a standard interview process to find Rosica's replacement, and Ladas "was the best qualified to help grow our corporate equity derivatives business." Ladas was unavailable for comment.

The Korean National Pension Corp., with over KRW60 trillion (USD46 billion) in assets, will soon start using derivatives, beginning with currency and interest-rate swaps. Chang Kil Hoon, head of the investment strategy group in Seoul, said the Korean government last year passed a law that will allow the public pension scheme to begin using derivative products in July. It plans to use swaps to hedge interest rate and currency exposure on its portfolio of non-won denominated bonds issued by Korean corporates.

Harley Bassman, managing director on Merrill Lynch's over-the-counter debt options desk in New York and a 16-year veteran of the firm's fixed-income options trading area, has been named head of the real estate structured finance department. Bassman said he takes responsibility for North American CMBS, MBS and ABS trading and sales efforts and has replaced Greg Odland, whose new brief has yet to be determined. Both Odland and Bassman declined comment on the reason for the reshuffle. Bassman reports to Tom Likovich, head of debt markets trading and sales for North America.

The weather derivatives industry is one of the most rapidly growing fields of risk management today. Such instruments, whose underlyings are functions of temperature and other weather variables, enable purchasers to manage the volumetric risks associated with warmer or colder-than-average weather. The great power of weather derivatives lies in their potential for diversifying weather-related risks across the entire economic spectrum, not just between energy producers and consumers. Indeed, the range of industries susceptible to adverse weather is large, including amusement parks, beverage companies, winter apparel manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, resorts, golf courses and agricultural companies.

On the view that interest rates will rise toward year-end, Mellon Private Asset Management is buying longer maturity corporate bonds in anticipation of spreads tightening on the long end of the curve, says John Poole, portfolio manager in Boston. The overall strategy complies with his goal of staying neutral his benchmark's duration, in anticipation of a greater steepening of the curve. He also says that he has been buying shorter term ABS and MBS with the same thought in mind.