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RBS Financial Markets has poached several senior members of ING's Asian securitisation team to set up a new Asian securitisation business, based in Tokyo. John Mullins, head of ING's Asian securitisation group, will take on the same role at RBS. He brings with him Richard Lamb, director, Asian securitisation, and Hiderhiro Katsumata, director, Japanese securitisation.

Australia Centro Properties Group's hostile takeover bid for AMP Shopping Centre Trust (ART) last week could lead to more debt raising in the sector. Centro acquired 19.9% of the trust last week as the start of a hostile takeover bid.

ABN Amro has snatched Soh Hang Kwang back from Citigroup/SSB as the new head of Singapore client coverage this week, and brought Ricor da Silveira over from Miami as the head of cash and payments sales and working capital country head. As such da Silveira heads a new team for the region.

ERAP, the entity through which the French government is helping to recapitalise France Télécom, will today (Friday) price its inaugural Eu4bn five year benchmark at 8bp over OATs. The deal will provide a platform from which to launch the remaining Eu5bn required to fund the state’s loan to the French telco.

Amount: Eu216m Legal maturity: April 2 2010

Insurance company Aegon yesterday (Thursday) met several banks ahead of establishing a EuroMTN programme for Aegon Financial Assurance Ireland Ltd. The UK and US arms of the Netherlands-based company already have operations in Ireland, but EuroWeek understands that the programme will be for a new unit of the insurer.

ERAP, the entity through which the French government is helping to recapitalise France Télécom, will today (Friday) price its inaugural Eu4bn five year benchmark at 8bp over OATs. The deal will provide a platform from which to launch the remaining Eu5bn required to fund the state's loan to the French telco. Lead managers are BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and UBS Warburg. Deutsche is also global co-ordinator.

Mandated arrangers Africa Merchant Bank, BNP Paribas, Natexis Banques Populaires and SG will close the sub-underwriting stage of syndication for the $1.15bn pre-export financing for Sonangol at the end of next week. The deal will be launched into the retail stage afterwards.

The A$1.4bn fundraising for Burns Philp's acquisition of Goodman Fielder is progressing well after Burns Philp secured acceptances for more than half of Goodman's stock and obtained majority representation on the Goodman Fielder board.

Rating: Aa3/AA-/AA- Amount: $350m (increased from $300m)

Never let it be said that you didn't hear the first whispers in the pages of EuroWeek. Before you could say "who can remember how many hairs you could count on the top of Jon Corzine's head?", Goldman Sachs had loaded its famous president and co-chief operating officer, John Thornton, into an 18 inch naval gun, pointed it towards China, and given the order to fire. Thank heavens Johnny Thornton landed safely and is still looking good, but then this is not a man who ever has a bad hair day. Who loaded Mr Thornton into the barrel? As we have been suggesting in these columns for several months, a turf war has been raging within Goldman Sachs for some time but, true to form, Goldman has been saying nothing and the body bags have been taken out at the dead of night along with the garbage. When snoopy, ill-informed scribblers enquired whether all was well, and were those really body bags, they were met with a wall of silence.

Banks will now be signed into the $500m 10 year facility for Alba. Signing has been delayed slightly and EuroWeek hears that this is due to the arrangers finalising some details for the Islamic tranche which is part of the overall $1.55bn phase II expansion project.