Sector: Derivatives

WHERE THERE WILL DEFINITELY BE HIRING: Exchange traded derivatives

Where should you position yourself if you want to be the beneficiary of hiring between now and 2013? Try exchange traded derivatives. They are hot. And getting hotter. What? Unsurprisingly, exchange traded derivatives are derivatives that are traded on public exchanges. Traditionally, they have been simple things like futures and options but the exchange traded [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 16 August 2011 • 6 comments

Yannick Mallegol, the professional Ferrari-racing head of derivatives sales at Barclays Capital, has left the bank

If you were trying to conceive an ideal job in financial services, you would struggle to come up with something more appealing than that recently occupied by Yannick Mallegol. Mallegol was the former head of equity derivatives flow sales at Barclays Capital and and raced Ferraris. These are the cars Mallegol races. He recently came [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 28 July 2011 • 3 comments

YOUR KILLER EQUITIES INTERVIEW QUESTIONS: What is the price of a one year call option on a stock, with share price = $100, known interest rates of 5%, volatility of zero and no dividends?

Here’s the latest question sent in by site visitors who have attended equities interviews at investment banks. This question has allegedly been asked in equity derivatives trading interviews. The answer has been suggested by the person who submitted the question (and is not being advocated by us). If you disagree with the answer, or have [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 22 July 2011 • 7 comments

So you want to work in ETFs? You’ll, unfortunately, be lucky

ETFs are where it’s at. With a compound annual growth rate of 81% in Europe over the past decade and with growth of 31% in the past year, they are an increasingly rare example of unbridled expansion in the financial services sector. Unsurprisingly, expansion has led to signs of hiring. Hence, Citigroup announced last week [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 14 June 2011 • 1 comment

Equity derivatives interview questions from Goldman Sachs

Equity derivatives are going to be totally steaming, at least compared to all other areas in 2011 according to analysts at JPMorgan. You may therefore be interested to know what Goldman Sachs is allegedly asking in equity derivative interviews this year. The questions below were sent in by a student for our latest iPod competition, [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 6 December 2010 • 8 comments

BarCap’s FICC people are most at risk of redundancy

BarCap is making redundancies. Reuters cites a ‘spokesperson’ who says they’ve begun a pre-cull consultation process. Bloomberg says the cuts will involve ‘hundreds’ of people. Interestingly, Bloomberg also says that the cuts will, ‘follow a review how much capital each unit of the business uses.’ Banking analysts suggest that BarCap is rightsizing its business in [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 1 December 2010 • 0 comments

The place to be in 2010, 2011, 2012 and the foreseeable future: inflation trading?

Inflation trading is hot. It is so hot, that last week Deutsche Bank announced the appointment of global co-heads of inflation trading and a head of inflation options and exotics trading, two of whom were hired externally from SocGen and Citigroup – even though we are months from the end of the year. Other banks [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 15 November 2010 • 2 comments

The new hot thing: CVA trading

Counterparty valuation adjustment (CVA) desks are nothing new. Most major US banks have had them for a while. However, thanks to Basel III capital rules related to CVA, the area is becoming substantially more popular. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, CVA desks are an internal function which aggregates counterparty risks across the bank. Having [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 11 October 2010 • 10 comments

If the axe falls, it will fall hardest at UBS, BofA Merrill, Nomura, and Morgan Stanley

Earnings season kicks off this week, with JPMorgan, BofA and Citigroup finally expected to divulge what happened in the three months from April. Given that this includes the difficult month of May, it’s not likely to be pretty, although results may be massaged by debt valuation adjustments. If Q2 results aren’t matched by an improvement [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 12 July 2010 • 1 comment

Equity derivatives hiring was hot, now it’s not

In recent weeks we have been pursued by people telling us about the enormous amount of hiring taking place in equity derivatives. Now that we’ve looked into it, it seems we’re too late: there’s no hiring after all. “Although critical hires will still have to be made, a lot of the plans for bringing on [...]

By Sarah Butcher, 7 June 2010 • 4 comments