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South African power utility Eskom priced a Eu200m three year offering at the tight end of expectations last Friday via lead managers Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Crédit Agricole Indosuez. Eskom's main reason for issuing was to maintain name recognition in the European markets, said Johan van den Berg, general manager in charge of treasury at the state owned electricity company. "We have been active there for more than 20 years and our last bond matures this month," he said. "We wanted to stay on asset managers' books. This is why we kept the offering small and short - if we had needed the money, we would have looked for longer dated paper."

Arrangers Bank of America, Citigroup/SSSB, Deutsche Bank and Nordea were this week forced to flex the pricing of a £250m 3-1/2 year revolver for the UK's biggest travel group, MyTravel Group plc. Resistance to the loan's tight pricing was voiced at a bank meeting held in London on October 1. The apparent refusal of Deloitte & Touche to sign off MyTravel's accounts, a profit warning, the rapid decline of the company's share price and the resignation of CEO Tim Byrne (after the market had announced its distaste for the transaction's pricing) meant that the borrower and arrangers had no choice but to bump up the deal's yield.

The 15 mandated arrangers will sign banks into the $225m term loan for Türkiye Garanti Bankasi today (Friday). The deal is oversubscribed and will be increased to $325m on signing.

Rating: A2/A-/BBB+ Amount: £150m

Carnage hit the dollar bond markets this week as participants clamoured for the Federal Reserve to take action to avoid what some fear could be a complete shutdown of credit markets if the US economy fails to show any signs of a recovery. The only solace to be offered was yesterday (Thursday) afternoon when the Dow Jones staged an impressive turnaround after Wednesday's sharp falls.

The corporate bond market was all but closed this week as secondary spreads widened to record highs and swap spreads ballooned to the widest levels seen for months. Ford paper traded on a cash price only as its spreads versus Treasuries traded out to junk levels and concerns grew that the company could be downgraded. Moody's and Standard & Poor's said that a downgrade to junk was inconsistent with their views. Nevertheless Ford spreads widened 150bp on the week. GMAC was dragged in Ford's wake, trading out by 110bp, while DaimlerChrysler gapped out by 40bp. Among the European car makers, Fiat shares fell to 14 year lows and its bonds widened by around 125bp.

WestLB, Lehman Brothers and SG, the three mandated lead arrangers and joint underwriters of the senior debt for the new Wembley Stadium project are finalising their syndication strategy. They expect to launch the deal to the market in about 10 days. The three leads will share bookrunning responsibilities for the £426.4m of senior bank debt.

Wellington Underwriting, the UK-based insurance company, has confirmed its intentions to tap the equity market for the second time in two months as it launched a £120m placing and open offer this week. The company will issue 62m shares in a firm placing alongside an open offer of 145m shares, on the basis of 20 open offer shares for every 39 existing shares.

Guarantor: FSA Amount: $500m (Euro/144a)

The World Bank has closed its doors to emerging market sovereigns looking for guarantees for international bonds and loans, following Argentina's decision not to pay a $250m obligation coming due on its $1.5bn guaranteed deal. Argentina said this week that it will not meet the payment to international bondholders, due on October 15, leaving the World Bank to foot the bill.

EuroWeek hears that CIBC is in the market with the recapitalisation of debt facilities signed for media company Xerium. CIBC arranged the original $628m debt facilities that backed the buy-out of media company BTR Paper Technology by Apax Partners in June 2000. The company is now called Xerium. In 2001 CIBC restructured and refinanced those loans by adding them to existing senior debt.

SBS Leasing, a division of Banca Lombarda closed the first Italian lease backed deal of the quarter this week with a Eu619m securitisation of real estate, vehicle, and equipment leases arranged by Credit Suisse First Boston. The deal precedes a busy pipeline in the sector this quarter, including issues from Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Selma Bipiemme and Privata Leasing. After an extensive marketing process, final pricing fell 2bp wide of talk on the senior bonds at 36bp over. The junior tranches, wrapped by the European Investment Fund, both hit price talk.