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The Eu400m five year multi-currency revolver for paper company Holmen was signed yesterday (Thursday) in Stockholm by arrangers SEB and HSBC. The deal was oversubscribed and increased to Eu500m.

Final commitments to join the Eu750m 364 day refinancing for Danish telco TeleDanmark are expected today (Friday). Banks are due to be signed into the deal on June 14 in Copenhagen. TDC last tapped the market in June 2001 with a Eu1.5bn 364 day multi-currency bullet facility, which is to mature next month.

General syndication of the £1.795bn of debt facilities for Tube Lines, the holder of the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines concession under the London Underground Public Private Partnership (LU PPP), was finally launched this week. A well attended bank meeting was held in London yesterday (Thursday).

The $50m five year facility for Union International de Banques (UIB) is due to be launched into the market today (Friday). ABC (facility agent) and Citigroup/SSB (bookrunner) are arranging the single-stage syndication.

Rating: A1/A+ Amount: Eu500m

Despite having just one $14.53 million trade outstanding off its euro2 billion ($1.87 billion) global MTN programme, Vivendi Universal has increased the debt limit four fold to euro8 billion. It has also bumped up the number of appointed dealers by adding Natexis Banques Populaires to the dealer panel. The other dealers on the panel are Banque Nationale de Paris, Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

EuroWeek understands that TXU Europe has quietly slipped into the market with a new £400m facility led by Royal Bank of Scotland and BayernLB. The deal is thought to be a two year LC facility carrying a margin of 100bp over Libor.

A1/A+ rated German car maker Volkswagen is preparing to launch its jumbo Eu15bn revolving credit facility next Thursday, a deal that will severely test the strength of the company’s relationships with its core banks and show the true value of ancillary business in the modern-day European syndicated loan market.

William Hill, the UK's second largest bookmaker, kicked off bookbuilding for its eagerly anticipated £472m IPO this week following in the footsteps of a hat-trick of UK IPOs that have traded up from their listing price in the last two weeks. There was a notable change in sentiment on the European syndicate desks this week after the successes of Wood Group (see separate story) and Intertek Testing Systems, which traded straight up after their debuts on the London Stock Exchange.

John Wood Group, the UK's largest oil services company, saw its shares soar on their first day of trading this week after a strong bookbuilding period enabled the company to price its £263m IPO at the high end of the pricing range. Wood Group closed yesterday (Thursday) at 216p, 11% above the offering price of 195p.

As we go to press there are suggestions of more Euromarket casualties. Can it be true that our friend, Kevin Regan, is no longer on his perch as head of sales at UBS Warburg? Kevin, who is a personal friend, seems to have been in the Euromarkets for ever and a day but in fact he is only 44 and in his prime. We suspect that he may have been a casualty of the major internal reshuffle at UBSW, but he is rich, has a lovely wife, a good tailor and will be snapped up before you can say "whatever became of Steve Oristaglio?". Also on the way to pastures new is Malcolm Wager who learned his trade at Morgan Stanley and, more recently, was the great white hope at ABN Amro. The Dutch bank is no longer an also-ran in fixed income and insiders say that Wager's performance was outstanding. We hear a story that he lost out in a fire-fight with Amsterdam, but will talk more on that subject, as well as the departure of Mr Regan, next week when the smoke has cleared.