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Denmark Morgan Stanley and Carnegie sold a Dkr1.7bn (Eu228m) block of Lundbeck, the Danish drugmaker, on Wednesday.

The Russian government this week appointed Morgan Stanley to underwrite a $700m sale in Lukoil, the country's largest oil company. Alexander Braverman, the first deputy head of the Russian ministry of economic development, said on Wednesday that Russia plans to sell a 5.9% stake in the company in June or July.

High yield investors offered a muted reaction to the impending default of telecoms group NTL, which announced on April 1 that it was withholding interest payments on certain high yield notes. There is now a 30 day grace period before the default is official, and it will be one of the biggest bond defaults in history. One investor said that the impending default had already been priced in back in December. Another said that the only real interest in the news was how the default might accelerate a corporate restructuring and a potential merger with Telewest and equity investment by Liberty Media or maybe even AOL Time Warner.

All three leading rating agencies have assigned ratings to the newly created Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Corporate Bank. The new entities were formed this week through the re-organization of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB), Fuji Bank (FB) and Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ). Standard & Poor's has assigned its triple-B long-term and A-3 short-term counterparty credit ratings. Moody's has given an A-3 long-term issuer rating, while Fitch gives it an A- long-term rating. However, all three agencies have negative outlooks on the new entities. Mizuho Holdings, the group head, was established in September 2000. The company was formed as a result of the consolidation of the operations of DKB, FB, and IBJ. With assets of ¥164 trillion ($1.24 trillion), Mizuho is the world's biggest banking group in asset terms. By comparison, Citigroup has assets totalling $1.05 trillion. Since its formation, Mizuho has made an impact on the Euro-MTN market as one of its busiest bookrunners. It is a dealer on nearly 200 Euro-MTN facilities, but much of its business comes through reverse enquiry. It has led 189 private placements in 2002, second only to Salomon Smith Barney.

JP Morgan last week offered ABS investors rare exposure to emerging market sovereign risk, with a collateralised debt obligation worth $216.6m. Managed by Barep Asset Management, a division of SG, the deal will parcel fixed and floating rate bonds, loans and synthetic obligations issued by emerging market states, with a maximum concentration of 5% for any single obligor.

Securitisation specialists have begun to digest the surprise announcement two weeks ago from Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, that it planned to lay down hard rules for state securitisation accounting treatment in July. The move threatens to undermine one of the chief motivations for states to securitise - that EU governments can reduce debt to GDP ratios towards the target levels prescribed by the Maastricht treaty by using securitisation instead of normal borrowing.

ProLogis, the US-based property company that specialises in distribution warehouses, last week launched its second European securitisation. But in a change from the company's original plans the transaction was backed by a loan secured on only French properties in the outskirts of Paris. In 1999 the company set up the ProLogis European Properties Fund to run the European operations of the US ProLogis Trust. The fund now owns around Eu1.6bn of distribution warehousing in Europe and is expected to increase this to Eu3bn within the next few years, based on the fund's equity commitments.

This week saw the first securitisation of rents from student accommodation for over two years, when Unite Group plc securitised rental flows from a portfolio of student and NHS key worker accommodation. Investors were initially wary of exposure to the low income world of UK students and only six of the 47 properties are occupied by the NHS. In February, Moody's downgraded two tranches of notes from the first securitisation of UK student loans, Greenwich NatWest's £1.03bn THESIS No 1 plc of March 1998.

In a move to re-establish its weather derivatives trading business Swiss Re Financial Products has hired Mark Tawney, former head of the weather derivatives desk at Enron in Houston, and a team of four other weather traders from the bankrupt power company, according to a Swiss Re official.

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 2 1/2% 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 on Tuesday and carries a LIBOR plus 3 1/4% 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.

FleetBoston Financial and Bank of America are set to launch next Tuesday syndication of a $300 million credit for Team Health backing the $147 million acquisition of Spectrum Healthcare. The credit, which includes a $150 million "B" term loan, also refinances $110 million in existing debt led by the two relationship banks. A decision was made to finance the acquisition with bank debt, rather than bonds or equity, because of perceived investor appetite for health care in the bank market.