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left to right: Jean-paul Brasier, Dickson Cheung
Calyon's three-year presence in Asia's structured products scene has been dominated by building its profile. When Credit Agricole merged with Credit Lyonnais in 2002, the new entity had virtually no brand recognition outside France, let alone in Asia. In a burgeoning equity structured products market full of some of the best-known names in banking, this was a handicap.
With this in mind, in the past two years the bank focused on retail flow and commoditized product areas, including capital-guaranteed funds and more recently equity-linked notes, which have constituted the majority of its business. The French bank is also interested in expanding its efforts in the Hong Kong warrants business by introducing index-underlying warrants, which could increase its market share from the current 5%, as index-underlying warrants contributes more than 40% of the HK warrants market turnover.
Jean-Paul Brasier, Calyon's head of equity and funds derivatives, Asia-Pacific, says that Calyon's interest in capital guaranteed funds, retail structured notes and warrants requires...