Mark Mallia, the US investment bank's Asian investment grade debt trader and syndicate official is believed to have re-surfaced at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW) after leaving the firm just over a month ago.

A long-standing and popular fixture in the Asian debt world, Mallia returns to Tokyo to take up a position as head of Asian credit trading and syndicate. He last lived in Japan during the mid-1990's, when he was employed by Lehman Brothers, before moving to Hong Kong in early 1998 to take up a sales position at Morgan Stanley.

His former responsibilities will now be undertaken by Chris Zilla, Morgan Stanley's Asian high yield debt trader, who has recently been moved from Hong Kong to Tokyo and will now trade both the high yield and high grade markets from Japan.

Observers say that Jackson Chou, Morgan Stanley's Tokyo-based credit derivatives and asset sales trader has also left the firm. He is believed to have departed at the same time as Mallia and has now taken up a similar position at Goldman Sachs, Tokyo.