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--Leela Parker

The Maine Public Employees Retirement System is seeking a real estate consultant, IPE Real Estate reports. The pension fund, which will start the search within the next six months, decided in July last year to increase its target real estate allocation to 10% from 5%.

Merseyside Pension Fund has extended two contracts for real estate investment services, IPE reports. It has extended the property investment valuation contract with Colliers CRE to cover the March and September 2009 valuations, to provide the pension fund with “additional assurance” during the current market turmoil.

More than one senior sell-side figure has suggested I write about how much the banks should be thanking their FX businesses.

Euromoney ran a story almost a month ago about how Credit Suisse had decided to reward its staff with a load of toxic waste it had lying around on its balance sheet. This week, the market has been full of buzz about the process of signing up for the incentive scheme. The talk is that if staff want to qualify for a cash retention award, they have to agree to the scheme this week. If they delay, then the amount of compensation they will receive declines to the point where they will get what is colloquially known as diddlysquat.

It is remarkable how often things seem to repeat themselves.

There was some real fun and games in Bill and Ben (that’s dollar/yen for those readers who don’t understand rhyming slang) on Wednesday around the 3pm option expiry time. This time last year, I wrote about a huge call spread (100.00 versus 90.00 strikes) Citi executed, and sources say it was this strategy’s expiry that caused all the excitement.

Various institutions kindly send me their research, most of which is excellent. Some of it explains the past, while others predict the future.

There was a lot of coverage in the UK this week about comments from ‘high-profile market legend’™ Jim Rogers about the state of the country.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has elected Michael Dunn to serve as its acting chairman. He will exercise the executive and administrative functions of the Commission until president Barack Obama’s nominee, Gary Gensler, has been confirmed by the Senate. Dunn succeeds Walter Lukken who served as acting chairman from June 27 2007.

Clearly I wasn’t the only one puzzled by Jim Rogers’ prognosis on the UK prospects. My view is that his comments would have had far more validity if he’d told us all to short cable when it was above 2.10, not below 1.40.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange has appointed Bob Ray as its managing director, international products and services. Ray, who will relocate to London, will have chief responsibility for the development and execution of CME’s international business and sales strategy across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia and Latin America. He will continue to report to Rick Redding, the CME’s managing director, products and services.