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Credit Suisse First Boston has added Joe Friedman as a director to its loan sales team. Friedman joined the firm last week from J.P. Morgan, where he worked as a v.p. in loan sales and reported to Eric Rosen, managing director and head of secondary loan trading at J.P. Morgan. Friedman will focus on the firm's institutional loan sales. He could not be reached at his new location. Don Pollard, managing director and global head of CSFB's syndicated loan group, confirmed Friedman's arrival. A J.P. Morgan spokesperson confirmed Friedman's departure, but declined to comment further.

Affinity Group Holding has relatively high lease-adjusted leverage and faces potential business risks associated with the expansion of its Camping World store chain. The company is already operating on the edge of its rating's category and its new $175 million credit facility will bring the company's lease adjusted leverage up to 4.75 times, according to Moody's Investors Service. "Typically we like to see leverage come down over time," explained Dominic Ward, senior associate analyst at Moody's. The new credit, which has been assigned a Ba2 rating, will retire Affinity's existing credit and a portion of notes but the company is still increasing its debt by roughly $18 million.

The Australian bond market received a boost this week as ANZ Banking Group launched and then tripled the size of its A$500m five year transferable certificates of deposit (TCD) deal to A$1.5bn. Strong demand from onshore as well as offshore investor appetite ensured that the senior deal became by far the largest in the Australian bond market this year, and underlined the liquidity available.

The A$1.2bn placement of new AMP shares that UBS Warburg completed last Friday has been followed by reproaches against the company for foisting such a large deal on the market. AMP demutualised and listed in 1998 and since then there have been a series of controversial acquisitions, especially in the UK.

AUSTRALASIA Australia

The Australian market has surged back to life after Easter with two new issues, and Westpac is set to launch a rare offering of New Zealand mortgages from AMS. The first deal was Medfin's A$151.5m securitisation of auto and equipment loans, leases and hire purchase agreements via its MTN programme. National Australia Bank was lead manager on Medfin Series 2003-1 Trust, the first lease backed deal since UFJ Australia's A$300m Symphony Trust No 3 in December 2002.

The Export-Import Bank of Korea (Kexim) provided ample proof that investor demand for Korean credits is as strong as ever when it received $780m in orders for a $400m tap of its 4.25% 2007 bond on Wednesday, bringing the total bond size to $1.1bn. The depth of interest prompted Kexim to increase the tap from $300m and meant that the issue could be priced through the bid spread of the outstanding 2007 bonds.

The sale of Royal&SunAlliance's Australian and New Zealand operations, called Promina, is proceeding better than bankers had hoped when the roadshows began in early April. The bookbuild will be completed today (Friday) following four days of order taking. The indications are that the final price could be in the middle of the range, which would be an excellent result.

The Singapore Post initial public offering closed this week with the institutional books more than nine times covered. If the greenshoe is exercised, as seems probable, the deal could raise S$787m ($452m). This augurs well for trading, which will begin on May 13.

Hong Kong Standard and Poor's (S&P) remains optimistic about the prospects for Hong Kong banks despite the tough economic environment and effects of the Sars virus on the region's economy.

Singapore The Singapore government is to sell its remaining holding in Singapore Telecommunications. The government still owns 67.5%, or 12bn shares.

The Japanese government has set up the Industrial Revitalisation Corporation of Japan (IRCJ), a new entity that will buy and restructure some of the troubled loans of the country's corporates. The IRCJ will be funded by up to ¥10tr ($80bn) of debt guaranteed by the government.