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Barclays, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland are arranging a Eu4.5bn bridge loan for German media company Bertelsmann. The loan will be split into a Eu2bn tranche and a Eu2.5bn portion. It will be launched within a few weeks and will be repaid between 12 and 18 months through retained cashflow and the divestiture of BMG Music Publishing.

Established CDO managers Alcentra and Avoca Capital went head to head this week, shrugging off volatility in the corporate sector to price arbitrage deals at record levels. Alcentra priced its third Wood Street CLO at the end of last week. The increased Eu550m deal was arranged by Goldman Sachs and issued a junior Ba3/BB- tranche with an eye-catching spread of 410bp over Euribor, the tightest spread yet for the asset class.

Zais Group Investment Advisors has joined forces with Goldman Sachs to launch an unusual CLO equity structured product. The note offers investors exposure to a portfolio of equity tranches selected by Zais from deals arranged by Goldman. The deal will allow Zais to secure large lead orders in the highly competitive CLO equity market, and may also help Goldman to win mandates for future deals.

Two debut managers entered the CLO market this week, achieving relatively tight pricing despite their lack of track record.

ABN Amro this week priced Talisman III, a Eu690m securitisation of German and French commercial mortgages, nearly half a year after first marketing the trade. The Dutch bank began marketing a deal of the same name in December last year, but was forced to pull it when the borrower of its largest loan, Eu50m in a Eu295m transaction, announced shortly after the roadshow that it planned to prepay the loan.

Absa Capital and Vunani Capital this week launched the first securitisation in South Africa by a state-owned company, a R1.6bn ($239m) deal pooling residential mortgages made by state utility Eskom to its employees. The transaction, called Nqaba Finance I Pty Ltd, is the first in a R5bn programme. It is designed to make the company's mortgage lending arm, Eskom Finance Company self-funding ahead of its planned privatisation over the next year.

Barclays Capital and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein priced a £153m index-linked Private Finance Initiative hospital bond this week. The leads priced the Financial Security Assurance-wrapped NewHospitals (St Helens & Knowsley) Finance Plc using an auction. "We had the expected participation in the final book of a mixture of retail and arbitrage driven investors," said a syndicate official at one of the leads. "The book was 3.5 times subscribed, with a clearing spread achieved at the tight level of 52.7bp and arbitrage investors dominating the final allocation."

Royal Bank of Scotland this week became the latest bank to use securitisation to strengthen its balance sheet when it launched a self-led £4.7bn residential mortgage bond and announced a £3.5bn CLO.

The impact of German toymaker Nici AG bankruptcy continued to ripple through the asset backed market this week, as Moody's threatened to downgrade tranches in three mezzanine capital securitisations originated by Capital Efficiency Group, Deutsche Bank and IKB Industriebank, and Commerzbank.

Patrimonio dello Stato, the real estate fund set up by the Italian Treasury, should next week begin marketing its debt refinancing, via Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Banca Intesa and Morgan Stanley. The deal will parcel properties worth around Eu723m, most of which are leased to Italian state entities. The senior tranche is expected to be structured to be delinked from the rating of the state, and carry a triple-A rating.

Mediobanca and Nomura have closed a securitisation of settlement payments for healthcare suppliers in Lazio that allows the sellers to finance both present and future claims — the first such deal in this asset class. The deal, called Mercusio, was bought entirely by Dexia and works on a so-called "partly-paid" basis. At closing, Dexia bought Eu472m of initial bonds backed by payments owed by the region to healthcare suppliers under a settlement it reached with them in August last year.