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Never let it be said that you didn't hear the first whispers in the pages of EuroWeek. Before you could say "who can remember how many hairs you could count on the top of Jon Corzine's head?", Goldman Sachs had loaded its famous president and co-chief operating officer, John Thornton, into an 18 inch naval gun, pointed it towards China, and given the order to fire. Thank heavens Johnny Thornton landed safely and is still looking good, but then this is not a man who ever has a bad hair day. Who loaded Mr Thornton into the barrel? As we have been suggesting in these columns for several months, a turf war has been raging within Goldman Sachs for some time but, true to form, Goldman has been saying nothing and the body bags have been taken out at the dead of night along with the garbage. When snoopy, ill-informed scribblers enquired whether all was well, and were those really body bags, they were met with a wall of silence.

Banks will now be signed into the $500m 10 year facility for Alba. Signing has been delayed slightly and EuroWeek hears that this is due to the arrangers finalising some details for the Islamic tranche which is part of the overall $1.55bn phase II expansion project.

Rating: Aaa Amount: Eu1.5bn cédulas territoriales

Banco de Crédito Local (BCL) opened the cédulas territoriales market yesterday (Thursday), selling its Eu1.5bn seven year transaction at a level inside cédulas hipotecarias and just back from Depfa's public sector covered bond curve. The success of the transaction bodes well for the public sector counterpart to the burgeoning cédulas hipotecarias market, which recently reached Eu40bn of outstandings and overtook the French obligations foncières market in terms of size.

Rating: A2/A-/A+ Amount: Eu700m

Brokerage firms were the only players keeping the high grade US corporate bond new issue market alive this week, as the war continued to hit borrowing plans. With rumours of terrorist warnings and continued uncertainty about the duration of the Iraq war, companies were reluctant to borrow, despite record low rates and still very strong cash levels among investors.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA Amount: C$50m (fungible with two issues totalling C$150m launched 08/11/01 and 24/10/02)

Spanish utility Endesa yesterday (Thursday) raised Eu500m from the sale of its last remaining holding in oil company Repsol. BBVA and Morgan Stanley bought the block after a bidding process on Wednesday evening, but appeared to struggle to sell the stock the following morning.

Rating: Aa2/A+ Amount: $500m