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Investors say the Middle East is becoming an interesting new territory for hedge fund managers, as opportunities in the region increase.

Armins Rusis is joining Markit’s executive team from Morgan Stanley as vice-president and global co-head of fixed income, alongside a founding partner at Markit, Kevin Gould. Rusis worked at Morgan Stanley for 17 years and was latterly head of US credit trading and global head of securitized and structured credit trading. Prior to that he worked in Europe, until May where he was head of credit trading. He was replaced by Patrick Lynch.

An investment research paper (Conditional Variance Swaps, Product Note, JPMorgan Securities, April 3 2006) by analysts at JPMorgan explains how variance swaps emerged.

The annual Daiwa SMBC debt syndicate summer press party will stay in the memory of all who attended. But not just because of the fine wine, company and fare on offer at Sweetings, a City of London culinary institution. An unintended level of prescience led European head of fixed income at the Japanese brokerage Andrew Asbury to decide that the theme for the party would be based on reality TV programme The Apprentice. Asbury, affectionately known as Asbo in the industry, had partygoers vote for their favourite members of the Daiwa syndicate team. In keeping with the Apprentice theme, Asbo took up the role of Sir Alan Sugar/Donald Trump.

Citi is poised to unveil Stuart Sopp as its head of G10 spot FX trading for Asia. Sopp, who will be based in Singapore, was previously working at Deutsche Bank in Sydney, where he traded spot Commonwealth dollars. Before that, he was at Bank of New York in London. He will report to Pritpal Gil, Citi’s head of FX trading for Asia.

SPA ETFs is looking into its first international exchange-traded funds. The firm, which has offices in New York and London, offers six ETFs that invest only in U.S. stocks but is considering launches of at least one offering that invests in European companies and at least one offering that invests in Asian companies sometime next year. Neil Michael, head of quantitative strategies, said European clients demand European funds to gain access to stocks on their continent. An Asian fund makes sense, he added, because SPA wants to offer a line of ETFs that is broad enough for advisors to build entire portfolios out of, and a diverse portfolio should have exposure to the growing Asian economies.

Americas Banking Atlas

Dubai, Bahrain and Qatar are vying to be the Gulf’s financial hub and the battle is by no means over, with each centre adopting a very different approach.

The many new financial services licences issued by the Capital Markets Authority in Saudi Arabia have presented international businesses with a challenge: which model to use to make the best of this new opportunity?

Hong Kong's Securities and Future Commission's (SFC) has approved State Street Global Advisors' fund to track the price of gold, despite its failure to meet the usual requirements for fund diversification.

Saxo Bank has lured Stuart Rice from City Index, where he spent a long time successfully building the company’s image. He will be Saxo’s regional marketing manager located in London.

Rumours persist that all is not well at CMC Markets.