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Australia UBS Warburg on Wednesday night (Sydney time) completed a A$161.1m bookbuild placement for Centro Properties Group, selling 45m stapled securities at A$3.58.

National Power Corp (Napocor) was left struggling to keep its plans to raise $750m in dollar and yen bonds intact after the World Bank's decision to let Argentina delay payments on its guaranteed bonds caused Standard & Poor's (S&P) to cut its ratings on supranational-backed deals. Following the World Bank's decision, Filipino government officials said that they are considering concentrating on the yen deal because the pricing has not been affected.

Standard Chartered completed its dual primary listing with placement yesterday (Thursday), raising the equivalent of $327m. The stock rose by more than 3.5% in morning trading. Goldman Sachs and Cazenove arranged the listing and placement. However, the deal could hardly be described as a blockbuster. The stock was priced at HK$84 per share, a discount of 2% to last Friday's London close of £7.08.

Australia Westpac last Friday (October 25) priced a A$313m RMBS for Australian lender Homeloans Ltd.

Metropolitan Bank & Trust (Metrobank) this week awarded UBS Warburg the mandate to lead manage a new $100m-$150m subordinated bond issue, as Bank Negara Indonesia launched a roadshow for its own $75m sub debt deal. The transactions will have a 10 year non-call five structure, and are the first deals to emerge from southeast Asia since the terrorist attacks on Bali two weeks ago. As such, bankers said that the international bid for each issue is likely to be fairly limited.

GUS, the retail and business services group, has signed a £2bn EuroMTN programme via arranger UBS Warburg. The signing partly reflects the increasingly strong performance of UK borrowers in the EuroMTN market. GUS is the ninth UK name to sign a debt issuance programme this year. Peter Blythe, GUS finance director, is happy to have the facility in place, but has no plans yet to roadshow or to launch the new facility's debut transaction. "We have been considering signing the programme for some months now," said Blythe. "While we have no specific requirements at this immediate time, we knew that we wanted to sign as early as possible. The main point of the facility is to add extra flexibility. Now we have it, we can issue when market conditions are favourable."

If business is this good in a down market, the prospect of Japan's eventual return to confidence and economic vigour augurs extremely well for the investment industry. In the short term, there is clearly more pain to bear for investors and for the Japanese taxpayer. In the medium term, most would put their faith behind the skills and intelligence of the Japanese people. Mark B Johnson reports.

Amount: Eu408m Legal maturity: November 8, 20

Amount: $4.108bn, Eu1.091bn, £546m

Cofco (Hong Kong) has mandated Bank of China, BNP Paribas, HSBC, ICBC Asia, Standard Chartered and SG for a $180m five year term loan. Banks will receive a margin of 48bp over Libor. Fees to the market have not been determined.

Rating: Aaa/AAA (Moody's/Fitch) Amount: Skr585m Öffentlicher Pfandbrief

The mandate to arrange the Eu125m three year loan for OTP has been awarded to BNP Paribas and BayernLB. EuroWeek understands that Deutsche Bank has been mandated to arrange a loan for General Banking & Trust Company.