David Crowle joined BNP Paribas as a vice president. Crowle is part of the firm's CDO effort, reporting to Thuy Doan, a director at Paribas.
Crowle was most recently in the asset-backed group at Bank Austria. According to a source, of the 13 people that made up the asset-backed team at Bank Austria prior to the merger with Hypo-und-Vereinsbank earlier this year, there are only two left. The source noted Mary Kane, who went over to Solomon Smith Barney in June (see ASR 6/12/00).
Robert P. Henderson has been named to the board of directors of Visible Markets Inc. Henderson served as the chairman of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank from 1981 to 1984, and served as chief executive officer of Itek Corp. The company hopes to strengthen its position in the online bond trading sector.
Several market sources reported a rumor last week that the British Bankers' Association (BBA), the organization that sets rate fixings which determine the final settlement price for Eurodollar and Libor futures contracts, was considering changing its published Libor fixings to LIMEAN (London Interbank Mean) fixings, from now on.
Sources said that if this is true, it could have important ramifications for swap-contract pricing.
Abbreviated as LIMEAN, this alternative pricing benchmark is the average of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and the London Interbank Bid Rate (Libid). Graphically, LIMEAN is the midpoint of the Libor-Libid spread, and has been used as a reference for floating-rate payments.
Swaps contracts (as well as Eurodollar contracts) are traded off the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. While officials at the Exchange said that they are not familiar with this rumor, they added that if such a change was to be discussed, there would first be a dialogue between the BBA and other financial organizations.
