Morgan Stanley
The credit derivatives market in the past 12 months has been dominated by the launch of various tradable indices. They have proved a phenomenal success, increasing liquidity and transparency and, as a result, the number of players and types of trade possible.
As that has also led to a narrowing of bid-offer spreads, the easy money for the broker-dealers has gone, forcing them to find new ways of making money from the product as well as being competitive in the flow business.
Morgan Stanley, last year?s winner of the most improved award in this category, has been at the forefront of all these developments. The US investment bank was instrumental in pushing the development of the index market in the past couple of years. Its Tracers product formed the core part of the Trac-X US product developed last year in conjunction with JPMorgan. This year, when iBoxx and Trac-X merged their European and Asian credit derivatives indices, Morgan Stanley was often in the position of being chief negotiator and arbiter of disputes. Senior members of the team have also been active in educating the market about the various uses of credit derivatives, spending time with consultants and organizations such as the Association for Investment Management and Research.