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Bear Stearns plans to add two more analysts to its investment grade research team. Doug Colandrea, the firm's head of investment-grade research for North America, says he has been interviewing for a senior analyst position to cover real estate investment trusts, and hopes to have it filled by the end of the quarter. "We have a major commercial mortgage operation and we feel we can leverage off of that and pick up REIT's," he says. He is also looking for a mid-level analyst to follow basic industries or some other area where the firm's coverage is currently thin or non-existent. Colandrea says that hire will likely come later in the year.

Mizuho Securities is pre-marketing a ¥16bn domestic securitisation for consumer finance firm Orient Corp (Orico). Oasis Version III will securitise the subordinated tranches from five previous Orico deals. Mizuho has pioneered this innovative technique of funding first loss pieces. This transaction is the third of its kind for Orico, and the bank arranged a similar deal for Showa Leasing.

Japan is likely to experience strong growth in securitisation this year. Issuance reached ¥4.5tr in 2002, and analysts predict that this will rise to over ¥5tr in 2003. Most of the growth is likely to come from the development of existing trends, notably repeat issuers and synthetic CLOs.

While there is caution about prospects for equity issuance in Asia Pacific this year, there is also a healthy degree of optimism. Plenty of money is available to take both pure equity and convertible paper, but it is clear that sensible pricing, solid management, yield and defensive structures will, like last year, feature heavily. Outside of Australia and Japan, new issuance in 2002 was surprisingly strong. In the year ahead, the market consensus is that there will be few jumbo privatisation issues, but there should be a solid flow of deals in the range of $100m-$800m. There should also be continued diversification across a broad array of industry sectors, including banking, insurance, property, shipping/logistics, power and telecommunications.

With presidential elections only recently concluded, the Republic of Korea has wasted no time in mandating a $1bn 10 year refinancing, paving the way for what could be one of the most influential Asian sovereign benchmarks of 2003. The bond will only be the second ever from the A3/A- rated sovereign. Its rarity and 10 year maturity means that the issue will be an important reference for other Asian sovereign issuers and the strong pipeline of Korean bonds expected in the coming months.

The Republic of the Philippines struggled to complete a $500m tap of its 2013 bond on Wednesday after reports on Tuesday suggested that the Philippines' current account figures for 2002 had been overstated. The sovereign's spreads on the 2013 issue widened by 25bp from the beginning of the week, leaving joint lead managers Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley fighting to regain the initiative.

The $1.4bn settlement between New York attorney-general Eliot Spitzer and 10 investment banks over misleading research has come under fire for being too lenient on the banking industry. Citigroup/SSSB took the brunt of the settlement with a $400m payment, with Credit Suisse First Boston contributing $200m. Piper Jaffray was not part of the original settlement but on December 30 agreed to a $32.5m pay-out. San Francisco-based Thomas Weisel is still negotiating.

Rating: Aa3/A+/A Amount: $750m lower tier two capital - Euro/144a

Rating: A1/A/AA- Amount: Eu700m tier one capital