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It was all AOL Time Warner this week as the company hit the market with a $6 billion 4-tranche offering. The deal was increased from the original $3 billion size due to heavy demand. AOL Time Warner was the latest example of a company accessing the bond market to term out commercial paper and other short-term borrowing. GECC ($11 billion), Verizon ($2.5 billion), Morgan Stanley ($6 billion) and Credit Suisse First Boston ($2.5 billion) have all done jumbo deals in the past month to replace shorter term borrowing or to pre-fund maturities later in the year.

Sell-side cable analysts are sharply divided in their outlook for the bonds of Adelphia Communications, in the wake of the cable company's disclosure of $2.3 billion in off-balance sheet debt. David Allen, high-yield cable analyst at Morgan Stanley, says that though he does not support the lack of disclosure by the Rigas family (which owns Adelphia) regarding its accounting practices, he believes the bonds are undervalued. He raised his ratings on the company's three senior notes issues from "outperform" to "strong buy" after they dropped 14 points in the wake of the recent disclosure, and the announcement that the company would be late in filing its annual report pending a review of its books by Deloitte & Touche.

Sabrina Del Prete has joined Barclays Capital's collateralized debt obligation group in London from J.P. Morgan Securities. She will be a senior product manager reporting to Eileen Murphy, global head of CDOs. Murphy, who is based in New York, says Del Prete's new role will be to coordinate and build the CDO distribution capacity of Barclays out of Europe. Del Prete will coordinate origination and structuring operations with sales and distribution efforts out of London, says Murphy. She says she will add another London senior banker within two months to work with Del Prete.

Société Générale is believed to have traded about $30 million of Conseco's bank debt in the 84 1/2-85 range last week with Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan each reportedly picking up $15 million of the name. Traders said that the paper fell from the 85-86 level where it had been trading two weeks ago. Activity on the name comes as Angelo Gordon &Co. announced it is suing the company in response to an amendment the company made to its credit agreement. A spokesman at SG declined to comment. Officials at Angelo Gordon declined to comment.

Bank of America and Merrill Lynch are preparing an approximately $220 million five-year amortizing term loan for Teterboro, N.J.-based Quest Diagnostics. The term loan will take out a portion of a $550 million bridge loan for the diagnostic testing company that backs the acquisition of Unilab, a provider of diagnostic testing services in California. The $1.1 billion acquisition announced last week includes approximately $200 million of Unilab debt, explained Joseph Manory, senior v.p. and treasurer. The bank meeting will be in the very near future, he said. Pricing will be the same as the current line, at LIBOR plus 1%, with a 31 basis point commitment fee.

Based jointly in Charlotte and New York, Lancaster heads up the CMBS and fixed-income real estate research effort as well as assisting Wachovia's underwriting efforts in the corporate finance area. He joined the firm from Bear Stearns in July 2001. He was assisted in this article by his research colleagues Davis Cable and Kathy Mixon.

Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are preparing a $600 million "B" term loan for Pleasantville, N.Y.-based Reader's Digest Association, backing the $760 million cash acquisition of Reiman Publications. "The entire $760 million payment will be bank debt," said Michael Geltzeiler, senior v.p. and cfo for Readers Digest. "Readers Digest primarily chose to use bank loans to finance the acquisition as it enables us to use the free-cash flows of the combined business to reduce debt levels," said Geltzeiler. This should enable accelerated deleveraging, he said. "Based on the rather favorable interest-rate environment we're looking at LIBOR plus 21/ 2% to 3%," he noted.

Credit Suisse First Boston and Bank of America's deal for Flowserve, which backs the acquisition of Invensys' valve division, is expected to join the club of credits recently oversubscribed, according to bankers. The seven-year, $735 million "B" loan was launched to institutional investors last week and carries a LIBOR plus 31/ 4% spread. A banker explained the "B" backs the $535 million acquisition and refinances existing debt. It could not be ascertained if pricing will flex yet, as the credit has only just been launched, said a banker.

Adelphia Communications' bank debt fell last week with a couple of $2.5 million pieces trading in the 96 range following new reports that the company's off-balance sheet debt may be larger than previously believed. Early last Wednesday, dealers quoted the name in the 95 1/2 97 context. The company also announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting an informal inquiry into the matter. Calls to Jim Brown, company v.p of finance, were referred to a spokeswoman who did not return calls by press time.

Joseph Philips, an asset-backed securities analyst who specialized in aircraft securitization, has resigned from Morgan Stanley where he worked for the past five years. "We are sorry to see him go, but Joe has decided to leave the business and pursue personal plans," says Chip Schorin, managing director and head of global ABS research. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Philips worked in the securitization field for eight years at Salomon Smith Barney.

Indonesian telecoms operator PT Telkom and its partially owned mobile subsidiary Telkomsel are looking to launch $100m deals in the international bond market. Telkomsel will access the market first and has appointed UBS Warburg as the sole bookrunner for a $100m issue. Parent company PT Telkom is likely to follow a few weeks afterwards with a A$150m five year transaction. JP Morgan was announced this week as the winner of a beauty parade.

A spate of new Japanese Uridashi bonds this week demonstrated that while the Samurai bond market remains effectively closed to international bond issuers, Japanese retail demand is still strong - at least for supranational borrowers. Encouragingly, the deals were all arranged using different currencies. The Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) came to market with a dual currency Uridashi bond. Mizuho was sole bookrunner for the issue, which consisted of a $103m 4.55% tranche and a A$134m 5.74% tranche.