Pre-migration untagged articles

Eurotunnel announced on Wednesday the terms of a restructuring package put together by Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs and Macquarie Bank that will cut the Channel Tunnel operator's debt from £6.18bn to £2.9bn.

UK telecommunications group Vodafone was downgraded by Moody's and Standard & Poor's (S&P) this week. Further downgrades are likely. The downgrade came after the company posted pre-tax losses of Eu14.85bn, a record for a UK company. However, it was the firm's decision that it would give equity holders a £3bn windfall in 2007 — and the fact that it told analysts it expected to target a new credit rating of low single-A during a conference call on Tuesday morning — that persuaded the ratings agencies to act rapidly.

WestLB AG launched its first jumbo Pfandbrief since the former Landesbanks lost their state guarantees last July, a well received Eu1.25bn 10 year public sector backed deal. The deal was made possible by the introduction of the new German Pfandbrief Act, which did away with the specialist bank principle.

Inflation fears continue to dominate the debt markets and a mixed message from the FOMC minutes, released on Wednesday, created a sell-off across markets.

Inflation fears continue to dominate the debt markets and a mixed message from the FOMC minutes, released on Wednesday, created a sell-off across markets.

Deutsche Bank reported that it traded Eu48bn of notional principal in the iTraxx indices in May, making it the most active month of 2006 and some 30% more active than the second most active month of January. It was the busiest month since May 2005 and the correlation crisis.

The US bond market sold off this week, sending yields higher, after the release of minutes of the last meeting of the Federal Reserve elicited concern about continued rate increases. Swap spreads followed yields wider.

Rabobank Nederland introduced a new local currency market this week with the first Israeli shekel public trade, a Ish150m ($33m) three year deal paying a coupon of 6% and led by TD Securities.

There was plenty of action on the tables this week. Commerzbank returns to league table one in 20th place. The German bank's deals included a Eu3m 10 year fund-linked note for Irish Life & Permanent and a Eu5m five year commodity-linked note for Banesto Financial Products. RBC Capital Markets and Mizuho moved up one notch each to take 13th and 15th places respectively on table one.

Stanfield Victoria Finance, a structured investment vehicle managed by Stanfield Global Strategies, an investment management firm part owned by XL Capital, launched its first EuroCP this week, three years after the programme was signed.