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Turnover in listed structured products on European exchanges increased in the first quarter of 2014, with trading volume up 25.4% to €33.4 billion, according to the European Structured Investment Products Association.

Trad-X, the interest rate swaps trading platform run by Tradition, has hit record trading volumes for dollar IRS, with volumes exceeding $290 billion since the inception of $ products in February 2013.

Jeff Micsky has been appointed global derivatives head at JonesTrading Institutional Services, based in San Francisco.

A significant number of senior buy- and sellside participants think that the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II will have a negative impact upon liquidity, according to a survey conducted by MarketAxess and Trax.

Investors have been picking up short-dated options on the euro against the dollar ahead of the European Central Bank meeting, due to take place Thursday.

The total options contracts traded in May dropped by 18.32% compared to last May, according to the Options Industry Council.

Tim Reilly, head of North American electronic execution sales at Citigroup in New York, has left the firm.

The fx carry trade is providing significant returns for market participants year-to-date due to risk assets being broadly supported by the global macro environment and fx volatilities continuing to remain at extreme lows.

Bloomberg has launched its own swap data repository, serving as a centralized record keeping facility for interest rate, credit, fx, commodity and equity swaps transaction data.

Market participants have been active in options on the US dollar against the yen following comments from Governor Haruhiko Kuroda setting out an unchanged monetary policy. The highlight of the flow was one investor picking up a sizeable at-the-money straddle on the pair.

Complex package transactions may be difficult to price electronically now that the package transaction requirement to trade such products on swap execution facilities is live, according to Nathan Jenner, coo of fixed income, currency and commodity trading at Bloomberg.

Nomura has hired Ronan Connolly, the ex-head of equities trading for EMEA at Citigroup in London, to the same role, also in London. Connolly is the latest senior hire by Nomura amid increased revenues in its equities business.