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The past year has been a surprisingly active period in Japan's equity capital markets. Several high profile IPOs have been completed, a number of follow-on offerings were concluded, the J-Reit sector is gaining a critical market capitalisation and the sale of cross-shareholdings continues apace. Mark B Johnson reports.

The bursting of the equity bubble at the end of March 2000 was cruel timing as German retail and institutional investors were beginning to see what spectacular returns the product was capable of. Now, promoters of the culture are desperately trying to reassure investors that equities have a future worth believing in. However, the possible reinstatement of the capital gains tax on the sale of cross-holdings would not help. Philip Moore reports. For a man who has one of the most challenging jobs in the German financial services industry, Franz-Josef Leven is remarkably good humoured. He is a director of the Frankfurt-based Deutsche Aktieninstitut (German Share Institute), meaning that he has the unenviable task of persuading German savers that, contrary to everything they have seen and heard since March 2000, investing in equities may not be such a catastrophic idea after all.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA Amount: Sk1.3bn

Syndication of the Eu2.525bn of senior debt facilities backing the Madison Dearborn Partners-led leveraged buy-out of Jefferson Smurfit Group (JSG) has been closed oversubscribed by joint mandated lead arrangers Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch. The deal comprises the largest amount of senior debt syndicated for a European LBO.

Rating: Aaa/AAA Amount: £100m (fungible with £200m issue launched 02/10/02)

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Compiled by Stephanie Weedon, HSBC Bank plc, London Tel: +44 20 7336 3525

Finnish power company Fingrid Oyj has mandated Barclays Capital (bookrunner), JP Morgan and Nordea to arrange a Eu400m five year revolver. The deal should be launched next week. Proceeds will be used for general corporate and liquidity purposes as well as refinancing a DM765m multi-currency revolver from 1997.

Rating: Aaa Amount: $1bn designated bonds

For most of this year German borrowers have dominated the investment grade loan market, but in the last quarter the focus has shifted to corporate France. A number of mandates have already been awarded, deals have been launched in quick succession and more French borrowers are due to tap the market, say bankers.

The growth of demand for foreign currency assets in Japan has led to a surge of bond issuance in US dollars, euros and Australian dollars targeted at Japanese investors.Mark B Johnson interviews a number of these top tier names.

With only two months left until year end, the European credit market is poised between a sustained rally from the historic wides of recent months and a renewed bout of equity market-inspired volatility. After gradually tightening over the past couple of weeks, corporate spreads moved sideways this week. Many investors and analysts believe that spreads have priced in recent positive news as well as some of the technical factors that were pushing corporate bonds higher such as short-covering by hedge funds.