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Sweden's Scania and Finland's Fortum this week launched $2bn of debt into the already burgeoning Nordic syndicated loan market. Both facilities should receive a warm reception, due to the strengths of the underlying credits. The first deal is the $1bn five year facility for Scania. Mandated arrangers ABN Amro, Deutsche Bank (joint bookrunner) and Nordea (joint bookrunner) launched syndication earlier this week. Bankers have been invited to attend a presentation at Scania's head office on Wednesday.

HSBC, NordLB and Standard Chartered have joined forces to launch a S$200m three year loan for Capitaland Commercial. Banks can lend in either Singapore or US dollars at a margin of 95bp over the Singapore dollar swap rate for Singapore dollar lenders and 95bp over Libor for US dollar lenders.

A shareholder decision in support of the demerger of Six Continents' pubs and hotels businesses announced this week was good news for some banks and bad news for others. CSFB and Lehman Brothers, which had underwritten a £3.5bn loan backing CMI's failed bid, are probably most disappointed.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA Amount: NZ$100m

EuroWeek has heard that the mandate to arrange the Eu50m five year amortising facility for Bank Celje has been awarded. Banks thought to be involved include Bank Austria Creditanstalt, Bawag, LB Kiel and RZB. The borrower last tapped the market in May with a Eu40m five year facility. Mandated arrangers were Bank Austria Creditanstalt and BayernLB. The deal paid a margin of 38bp over Euribor for the first two years and 42bp thereafter.

The Sohar Refinery in Oman (Oman Gas Company) has invited banks to bid for the mandate to arrange a new multi-tranche project financing which may exceed $1bn. Bank of America has been appointed financial adviser to the borrower and is busy collecting bids from eager would-be mandated arrangers for the facility. Bids are due in by the end of March and the mandate should be awarded in early April.

American Express Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Bank of Montreal, BayernLB, Citigroup/ SSB, Commerzbank, Crédit Lyonnais, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, ING, KBC, LBKiel, Mizuho, Natexis Banques Populaires, RZB, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Chartered Bank, SMBC and Wachovia have been signed in to ABSA's $330m one year term loan. Takes were roughly $18.3m each.

Do you remember when we were making discreet enquiries about Citigroup's new diva and heroine, the alluring Sallie Krawcheck? As you will remember, the wonderfully fragrant Sallie, a southern belle to the tips of her Jimmy Choos, had been brought in by Sandy Weill to clean up the mess and the pong of pickled eggs left by Jack Grubman in the Salomon Smith Barney research department. Even for a gal of Krawcheck's super-abundant talents, this was never going to be an easy task, but with the aid of a surgical mask and a silver nose-peg presented by Tiffany's, she set about it with vigour.

Syndication of the Eu706m of debt facilities backing the acquisition of Red de Alta Tensión has been closed twice oversubscribed. Banks will be signed into the deal in the week starting March 24.

Rating: A3/A- (Moody's/Fitch) Amount: Eu150m

A sudden burst of optimism yesterday (Thursday), based on the belief that if war comes it will be brief, took government bond yields and swap rates higher in both dollars and euros. In the dollar market swap spreads followed this development, though in euros some receiving business took levels off their highs yesterday.