Credit markets

CDSs on UK financials widen

The cost of credit protection on major UK banks rose this morning. The move came on the back of Standard & Poor's putting UK sovereign debt on negative ratings watch last week.

Duggan offers credit and equity play

Duggan Asset Management, a Dublin-based niche investment firm, has launched a 100% capital protected deposit-based structured product - called the Credit Bond. The product is designed to give investors exposure to the high-yield credit market by…

Q&A: EC official "optimistic" on central clearing deadline

Mario Nava, head of the financial markets infrastructure unit at the European Commission in Brussels, updates Risk on progress towards central clearing of credit default swaps (CDSs) and the move towards a central trade repository for over-the-counter…

Fed steps in to support CMBS market

The US Federal Reserve will start accepting legacy commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) as collateral under its Term Asset-backed Securities Lending Facility (Talf), as the US commercial real estate market continues to struggle.

OTC trade repository plan faces hurdles

Financial authorities in the US and Europe have advocated the introduction of a central trade repository to gather data on the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, but there is concern that multiple repositories could do more harm than good.

BIS shows first OTC derivatives market decline

The total outstanding notional of over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives contracts fell 13.4% to $592 trillion at the end of December 2008, from $683.7 trillion at the end of June 2008, according to statistics released by the Bank for International…

New FASB standards threaten off-balance-sheet vehicles

The US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has completed new rules on off-balance-sheet holdings that will compel US companies to consolidate on balance sheet billions of dollars of assets previously kept in special-purpose entities (SPEs).