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Marcus Browning has sprung a major surprise and left Citi, where he recently took up a new role to build a proprietary team to trade volatility. He is believed to be headed for the buy side. Sources close to Browning say that he has long held ambitions to see if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and that while he was extremely happy at Citi, an opportunity arose that he felt was too good to miss.

Reny Morsch-Zlatkovic has rejoined Eurex. Morsch-Zlatkovic spent five years with the company in London, and three years before that with Deutsche Boerse in Frankfurt. She left Eurex to join FXMarketSpace in November 2006. Morsch-Zlatkovic, who is a director of ACI UK, previously worked as a trader at UBS, Chemical and ABN. Her role at Eurex will be in sales, focusing on equity and index products.

Saxo Bank has promoted Tobias Straessle, its chief information officer, to chief operating officer. In an internal memo explaining the rationale for the change, Kim Fournais, Saxo’s joint chief executive, said that the bank is combining its operations and projects, and information technology departments under single global leadership.

While the Securities and Exchange Commission last week signaled its first approvals for actively managed exchange-traded funds, it was not all good news for the industry.

Sources say that Richard D'Albert is poised to move across from his role in securitisation – lucky fellow – and head up global head of sales for Deutsche Bank.

As the Securities and Exchange Commission moves ever-closer to fully approving the first actively managed exchange-traded funds, some experts predict a cool reception. Tom Lydon, president of Global Trends Investments and editor of ETFTrends.com, said the new breed of ETFs will not catch on because many ETF investors do their own asset allocation and use ETFs because they are cheap ways to track indexes. He said institutional investors and hedge funds in particular will likely shun the new offerings.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has given the American Stock Exchange the green light to bring in off-floor ETF market makers, a move traders say is necessary for when the Amex merges with the New York Stock Exchange. The so-called Designated Amex Remote Traders (DARTs) will act as automated market makers and will provide continuous quotes, fill trades and bring in new order flow. Until now, most of the options market makers were on the floor. NYSE Arca, which trades all Big Board ETF listings, is completely automated, so it would be difficult to combine Amex’ floor structure with fast-paced trading in the instruments, one trader said. Amex will handle the allocations and set specific performance standards at a later date. It is still unclear how much of the Amex floor would migrate to the Big Board and when. NYSE officials said it was too early in the merger process and no concrete plans have been made yet.

More on Merrill Lynch

If Europe and Japan authorities are reluctant to follow the same path their US counterparts, are we really moving towards serious rebalancing, even if via a shared recession?

Operating company securitizations had to take a back seat to real estate as UK corporates rode the real estate boom in recent years. But they could now be set for a revival. Louise Bowman reports.

The National Futures Association (NFA) has fined yet another of its forex dealer members. The regulator has ordered the Charlotte, North Carolina based Advanced Markets and its principals, Anthony Brocco and Geoffrey Gooch, to jointly pay a fine of $150,000. The decision came after an NFA hearing panel found that Brocco and Gooch failed to diligently supervise Advanced Market’s financial and recordkeeping activities and the promotional materials used by AMI’s unregistered solicitors.

Well, I seem to have upset one reader last week, when I described how I was off skiing for the weekend and some of the efforts Euromoney Poll head honcho Andrew Newby has to go to protect its sanctity. The reader, who calls himself Robin Prinz, added a comment to the site. “Break a leg!” he exhorted. “In fact, break both of them.”