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The Korean government sold 35.817m shares of Korea Tobacco & Ginseng this week, but the global offering fell about one-third short of its target, securing only $230m from international funds. However, the result was a considerable achievement given poor global equity market conditions and the KT&G share price performance on the day of pricing.

ABN Amro and UBS Warburg have hard underwritten the IPO of MobileOne, Singapore's second largest mobile phone operator. The two leads are understood to be talking to other houses to join as co-leads and take a portion of the hard underwriting. However, some banks are wary of the deal, citing limited fees for high risk and little control over the issuance process. One banker in Hong Kong said yesterday (Thursday) that the terms on which banks had been invited to participate remain unclear. The leads hope to launch the deal before the planned China Telecom offering.

Australian lender Members Equity Pty Ltd this week launched its first SEC registered global bond, a $1.4bn issue. Superannuation Members' Home Loans Ltd (SMHL) Global Fund No 3 is the largest dollar denominated Australian RMBS since Westpac's 1998 offering of just over $1.4bn.

Shares of NS Solutions, the computer systems subsidiary of Nippon Steel, fell more than 20% when the company debuted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange last Friday. Daiwa SMBC Morgan Stanley and UBS Warburg managed the sale. The deal, the largest Japanese IPO after the Daido Life float in March, raised almost ¥43bn. The listing came at a particularly difficult time, as the Tokyo market hovered near new 19 year lows and as pessimism grew about deflation, unemployment, non-performing loans and the slumping values of banks' cross shareholdings.

JTC Corp is spinning off a portfolio of science parks through lead managers DBS Bank, JP Morgan and Citigroup/SSB into Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust (A-REIT), in Singapore's second real estate investment trust (REIT) listing. The deal is likely to set a new benchmark yield for the REIT market in Singapore, which opened with the CapitaMall Trust (CMT) issue in July.

Australia Telstra embarked on a roadshow for its first Japanese retail targeted issue this week. Daiwa Securities SMBC is the sole bookrunner for the A$250m five year Uridashi deal.

Taiwan Several Taiwanese lenders are preparing to launch asset backed deals later this year. Taipei legislators passed a financial asset securitisation law in June, precipitating a flurry of interest from potential issuers.

Several subsidiaries of American Electric Power (AEP) ignored thin secondary market volumes to kick off a roadshow for a A$650m credit wrapped, asset backed transaction this week. The structure is unusual for the Australian bond market and is planned to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunities between US and Australian credit wrapped pricing levels.

Economists say that southeast Asia's finacial recovery may have been knocked off course by the terrorist attack in Bali. Set against a background of US corporate downgrades and concerns about a war against Iraq, the incident has also aggravated a regional flight to quality in the Asian bond market.

Sole mandated arranger Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi should launch the Eu75m five year facility for Slovenske Elektrarne into syndication next week. See EuroWeek 774 for more details.

We suspect that the top management of every investment bank have been studying the third quarter bond league tables with more than passing interest. After all, even if the third quarter wasn't plain sailing and several smaller boats hit the rocks in credit derivatives, there was still money to be made. With equity markets being savaged day after day and corporate finance on a life support machine, fixed income has been the only game in town, and it has been that way for the last 18 months.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA Amount: £50m