Mr Guido Cortesani This is Me

 Web References

1. 1. The Banker: Exchanges open up to credit

   www.thebanker.com/news/fullsto - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/3/2004   Last Visited: 5/8/2004

   Guido Cortesani, a director in the CDS group at Citigroup, is adamant that a CDS-based solution is optimal. "Cash indices have been widely used for benchmarking. But, because many underlying bond issues they contain are illiquid, they are very difficult to hedge, and therefore trading in cash-index-linked swaps has never really taken off. Conversely, CDS-based indices, just like their underlyings, are fully hedgeable and tradeable, and have rapidly become extremely liquid," he says.
   ...
   At Citigroup, which is part of the same consortium, Mr Cortesani believes that to ensure maximum transparency, it will be more important to have a neutral, rules-based approach to the selection of names that are included in an index than to have it mirror a loan or bond portfolio. Although the iBoxx indices are built on a rules-based approach, which restricts the amount of name-picking, he insists that most are of interest for loan books. "We have seen strong interest in the iBoxx products from a wide range of banks' investors, and even smaller accounts who are turning to these indices to hedge their own residual credit risk," he says.