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The Kazakh government dismayed some sections of the market on Wednesday by incorporating state owned oil company Kazakhoil into a new integrated oil and gas company, KazMunaiGaz (KMG), only a week after Kazakhoil issued its debut Eu125m five year bond via ABN Amro. The new company also incorporates TransNeftGaz (TNG), the holding company for oil and gas pipeline companies KazTransOil (KTO) and KazTransGaz (KTG).

The plan hatched by Islandsbanki's Ingvar Ragnarsson and Bill Symington to keep the market away from their brennivin on Wednesday night failed miserably. The threat of shark meat and ram's testicles at the Thorrablot party was not enough to deter the hardy MTNers, with more turning up than ever before, including Deutsche's ex-head of desk Tiina Lee and Dresdner's Jon Saunders. UBS Warburg's Paul Jones felt obliged to eat the pickled shark as Bjarni Armannsson, Islandsbanki's CEO, was handing it round. But Gavin Eddy, UBS's head of desk, was not to be seen. He was recovering from going on a survival course on Salisbury Plain. HSBC's Anne-Marie Ganatra was showing new boy Mark the ropes, and CSFB's Simon Hill was showing off his matching tie and cuff links. Fergus Kiely from HSBC and Brian McCarthy from Lehman Brothers have much better reasons to turn to the bottle. They are both getting married this year. Rob Nankivell from JPMorgan is taking a six-month sabbatical and will be surfing around Europe. Rachel King has stepped down from ABN Amro's MTN desk to find a comfier seat elsewhere in the bank. And Garrath Fulford, having left JPMorgan last summer, has been hired by an unidentified bank.

Oman The market has given a strong reception to the syndication of the $1.364bn loan refinancing for Oman LNG LLC. The deal is already oversubscribed and a number of banks are still outstanding. The deal's arrangers expect a large oversubscription when the books are finally closed, probably next week.

Event and political risk raised their profiles in the UK's troubled public-private partnerships (PPP) sector once again this week with rumours and counter-rumours circulating around the fate of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) PPP. Early in the week there were reports that the four mandated lead arrangers and underwriters of the £1.45bn financing backing the PPP - Abbey National Treasury Services, Bank of America, Barclays Capital and HBOS - were threatening to force NATS into administration as the company faced a liquidity crisis as a result of the sharp drop in airline traffic following September 11.

Never let it be said that we are not sometimes slightly ahead of the news. In issue 737 of EuroWeek on January 25, we said that CSFB's John Mack was about to ring the changes in his floundering investment banking division, and that many senior heads would be used as croquet balls for Mr Mack's sumptuous country estate outside New York. And who did we name as the man most likely to take over the struggling division? We said that Mack would turn to his trusty former colleague, Walid Chammah, who would cut the CSFB investment banking prima donnas down to size and off at the knees. And what happened? Before you could say, "did Linda Robinson in John Mack's office receive our Valentine card?", there was the grand announcement that Chammah was joining CSFB as co-head of investment banking.

* Clearnet and MTS have signed an agreement with Cassa di Compensazione e Garanzia, the clearing house for the Italian bourse. The three parties intend to set up a central counterparty service to allow transactions on Italian government bonds to be executed on MTS SpA, an electronic trading platform in Italy. The transactions would be executed anonymously and guaranteed by the service.

Event and political risk raised their profiles in the UK's troubled public-private partnerships (PPP) sector once again this week with rumours and counter-rumours circulating around the fate of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) PPP. Early in the week there were reports that the four mandated lead arrangers and underwriters of the £1.45bn financing backing the PPP - Abbey National Treasury Services, Bank of America, Barclays Capital and HBOS - were threatening to force NATS into administration as the company faced a liquidity crisis as a result of the sharp drop in airline traffic following September 11.

US dollar swap spreads scarcely changed over the week and traded in a very tight range of no more than 1.5bp-2bp. The new issue market picked up where it had left off last week and continued to provide a steady stream of large deals, most of which appeared to be swap candidates. The Republic of Italy launched a $2bn 10 year global yesterday (Thursday), which is to be priced today (Friday). The lead managers are Credit Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs.

Poland Initial price talk for the Republic of Poland's forthcoming Eu750m 10 year Eurobond via Credit Suisse First Boston and Citigroup/SSSB is said to be swaps plus 47bp. The republic completes its roadshow for the bond today (Friday), with launch expected early next week.

Germany Merck, the German pharmacetical company, is looking to spin off its laboratory distribution business, VWR International, in the near future.

* GMAC International Finance BV Guarantor: General Motors Acceptance Corp