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Dominican Republic Banca IMI's $170m project financing to develop six airports in the Dominican Republic is due to reach the market at the end of September or in October.

Personal investment loans returned to the asset backed market this week as NM Rothschild & Sons launched a Eu140m securitisation of loans to its high net worth private clients, secured on with-profits life insurance policies. The asset class first emerged in the late 1990s when Dutch securities house Bank Labouchere launched a series of deals backed by retail share lease contracts.

The bank debt of Qwest Communications International was believed to have traded around the 88 1/2 level this week after reportedly receiving relief from one of its covenants. The company's debt-to-EBITDA ratio was scheduled to drop from 4.25 times to four times at the end of the year, but an amendment increased the allowable leverage ratio to six times for the life of the loan.

Lehman Brothers and Commerzbank Securities are pitching trades based on a bullish view of the Canadian dollar. Eric Ohayon, head of foreign exchange structuring at Lehman in London, said investors are showing some signs of returning appetite for risk, which has historically been positive for the Canadian dollar as they look for higher yielding peripheral trades. The firms' views on volatility, however, diverge, as Lehman is expecting short-term volatility to fall and Commerzbank expects it to remain high.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association has published a blueprint for the new equity derivatives definitions it plans to publish before year end. One of the most significant changes is the clarification of mergers and the options that are available to deal with these events in derivatives contracts, said Karl Rogers, director and head of legal counsel for trading and derivatives at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London. In the 1996 definitions all the shares of the companies involved in a merger had to be transferred to the new entity in order for the option to also be transferred, which caused problems if minority shareholders kept shares. The most recent example of this was the Mannesmann and Vodafone merger. But, the new definitions have a tender offer clause in which derivatives professionals can select options from a menu depending on how many of the shares are transferred.

HVB Asia, the Asian arm of Germany's HypoVereinsbank, is gearing up its newly minted Asia structuring operation to offer foreign exchange and equity-linked products. "This is a core area for us in Europe and the States and we wanted to bring this to Asia," said Nick Hamilton, managing director of securitization and credit trading in Singapore.

JPMorgan has combined its research and market data and analytical tools into one Web site under the MorganMarkets brand name and may allow clients to execute over-the-counter trades through the site. Rick Schonberg, v.p. of e-marketing for North America in New York, said it is canvassing clients and will make a decision based on their feedback. The firm also plans to develop new features, such as a post-trade tool that will allow clients to see a list of their over-the-counter transactions with JPMorgan, said Joe Miyake, associate in the e-commerce interest-rate marketing group in London. The post-trade tool will come online around early next year.

Marshall & Ilsley, a regional U.S. bank with USD29 billion in assets, has unwound interest rate swaps it entered in advance of two fixed-rate bond offerings it sold last month. Don Wilson, senior v.p. and treasurer in Milwaukee, Wis., said the bank entered several forward-starting swaps, at rates and with counterparties he declined to name, to lock in base rates in advance of a two-part USD550 million offering. The swaps were liquidated when Marshall & Ilsley issued the debt, which consisted of a five-year USD300 million piece and a 10-year USD250 million chunk.

Nabors Industries, an oil and gas drilling company with roughly USD2 billion in annual revenue, is considering executing its first over-the-counter interest-rate swap. Dennis Smith, director of corporate development in Houston, said the Standard & Poor's 500 Index constituent is considering entering a swap on the back of a recent two-part, USD500 million bond, privately placed by Lehman Brothers. "We're looking at it, but we haven't done anything yet."

Credit derivatives professionals are at loggerheads over whether last week's announcement of Marconi's planned restructuring means that hundreds of millions of dollars of credit protection can be exercised immediately, rather than waiting several months for formal restructuring proceedings to commence. The issue is significant because investors' credit protection could expire in the time between the announcement and the start of proceedings.

Principal protected securities are "an old trick" that has reappeared in more and more deals over the past few months, according to Arturo Cifuentes, managing director at CDO collateral manager Triton Partners. However, with U.S. Treasury bonds trading at high dollar prices, protection has a high cost attached to it, said a CDO analyst with a leading underwriter.