Pre-migration untagged articles

British American Tobacco was forced to pull its planned sterling bond this week, as concerns over litigation in the US made investors nervous about the sector.

Almost as soon as we had suggested that some heads might roll within Barclays' UK domestic banking division, up popped poor old Roger 'the Dodger' Davis with a resignation statement.

For the first time in five years, Depfa will not set a minimum volume for its benchmark issuance in the forthcoming year, largely as a result of a lower funding requirement. The bank fell more than Eu3bn short of its Eu8bn target for this year when it cut its funding for the year in the light of the cancellation of the sale of its Pfandbriefbank arm from a planned Eu35bn-Eu40bn to Eu27.5bn.

Deutsche Bank will score another crushing victory in the international bond bookrunner league table for 2005.

Leak would like to thank John Studzinski, HSBC's top bought-in investment banking star, for a truly enlightening press party this week. Studs kindly invited us to Sir John Soane's Museum in London for a night of culture, canapés and Charles Clarke. That's the PR whizzkid, not the jug-eared cabinet minister.

Does Merrill Lynch deliberately set out to tease its shareholders? Perhaps they don't realise, because the stock keeps going up, dividends are rising and, after a short attack of corporate bulimia, Merrill is in rude health.

Property company British Land completed the signing of its £1bn EuroMTN programme this week. Barclays Capital and UBS arranged the shelf; they are joined on the dealer panel by Calyon, Mizuho International, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland and WestLB. On the new issuance front, the Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Guilia (FVG) launched the inaugural trade of its recently updated Eu2bn EuroMTN shelf this week. It issued a Eu387m 15 year amortising fixed rate eurobond which carries a 3.56% coupon. It was arranged by Depfa Bank, Dexia, Citigroup, Nomura and UBM.