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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.

It seems that David Puth is starting to make his presence felt at State Street. Puth was named as head of investment research, securities finance and trading activities for the Boston-based bank in August. In December, the bank announced the consolidation of its management functions.

Saxo has hired Ashif Jiwani as its head of derivatives trading, Asia. Jiwani, who was last at CIBC World Markets before he took a break to go travelling, will be based in Singapore. He starts in March and will report to Ed Voorhees.

Commiserations to all those made redundant by Bank of America this week. The weeklyFiX was sent a list of names of some of those let go in London and New York. Presumably other centres were also affected. I’ll leave it to others to pick over the bones on this one, but really there’s no need to compound the misery of those who have just lost their jobs by naming them.

Includes Bonds, Equities, Loans, M&A, MTN, Project Finance

The UK Treasury is understood to be considering the establishment of a conduit-style fund that would source investment directly from institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies to fund its infrastructure investment programme.

There is no denying the current strengthening of the USD and the deflationary environment. However, we see both as limited in time when the USA is “printing money”.

The move to get commercial real estate included in the Federal Reserve’s Term Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility is picking up steam. An amendment to TALF has been set forward that gives the option, but not the obligation, for commercial real estate debt to be accepted into the program. A vote on the amended bill in the House of Representatives is likely next week, at which time it will head to the Senate.

The commercial mortgage-backed securities market reportedly is concerned over plunging values of real estate owned by bankrupt retailer Boscov’s Department Store. The properties have seen a dramatic drop in value from $182.7 million at the time the loans for the property were originated to $40.5 million, and investors are concerned that if losses have begun hitting highly rated CMBS that contain Boscov’s-backed loans, they may be next to suffer. Delinquencies on commercial mortgages packaged and sold as bonds is said to be up nearly 200% in the past three months.

The Associationof Real Estate Funds has named Legal& General Property Managing Director Bill Hughes as its new chairman. Hughes succeeds former Chairman, Nick Cooper, global CEO of ING Real Estate Select.