Macquarie Group has spent the past couple of years expanding its global credit trading operations to balance its equity capital markets business, which has been weak since the financial crisis and has held back the group's overall performance in the September half. Credit trading has fallen within the group's fixed income, currencies and commodities division (FICC), which has operations in Asia, Europe and North America. FICC group head Andrew Downe said: "In the US, we've made a bit of a push in commercial mortgage finance and commercial mortgage-backed securities. "In Europe, we are still trying to get traction, but we're starting to expand in the credit trading space and with things like repos, rates and our credit offering into emerging markets in Europe as well. "In Asia, we offer local currency and G3-denominated Asian corporate bonds in the high yield and investment grade space, but with particular focus on the high yields.  We'll also do some private debt offerings and some traditional credit default swaps [and] total return swaps, and participate actively in the high-yield debt capital markets in Asia." Speaking at yesterday's Macquarie Group investor briefing, Downe said his division was getting involved in secondary trading in Asian investment-grade bonds covering sovereign, quasi-sovereign, corporates and financial institutions. "We're an active price-maker now in selected investment grade bonds and Asian sovereigns. We're doing secondary trading in Asian high yield bonds, with our main focus being China and also the resource-centric issuers such as Indonesia." The division is also developing a private syndicated loan capability. Downe said: "We'll be working in conjunction with the other parts of Macquarie on originating, structuring and distributing private loans, with the main focus on China, India and Indonesia." Macquarie sees good opportunities working with high growth phase companies with limited access to traditional sources of capital.   "We will co-invest alongside other investors. But it is an investor-led model, so we are trying to take people to a private market that [already] exists. Hopefully, we can focus in and leverage on Macquarie's strength in natural resources and infrastructure in that space."