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Investors didn't shy away from the bank debt of Qwest Communications International despite the announcement that the Denver telecommunications company incorrectly accounted for more than $1.1 billion in transactions. Early last week, traders said $5 million and $10 million pieces traded into the buyside in the high 60s. But with Qwest's bonds on the decline, traders said the paper had sunk to the 55-60 range by midweek.

Salomon Smith Barney and Bank of America are doing preparation work on a $675 million credit for Rayovac Corp., backing its $262 million acquisition of the consumer-battery operations of Hannover, Germany-based Varta. The Varta consumer business outside Germany will be bought outright, while the German consumer battery operation will be set up in a joint venture that will be 51% owned by Rayovac.

Scotia Capital has merged its U.S. high-yield and high-grade trading, sales, research and origination businesses, according to Frank Pinon, managing director and former head of high grade. The move was made to cut costs and better address the needs of clients, who are increasingly investing across the credit spectrum, Pinon says. He now becomes co-head of the U.S. credit business with Amil Schiaffino, managing director and the former high-yield head.

Salomon Smith Barney has hired three mortgage veterans to boost its efforts in sub-prime mortgage backed security origination, according to a memo obtained by BondWeek. Evan Mitnick joins from Greenwich Capital Markets, Randy Appleyard comes from AGS Financial and Ken Mulford joins from Merrill Lynch. The three will be v.p.s and report to Susan Mills, the director of the firm's mortgage origination efforts. Mills says the hires are to fill the gaps left by the departures of Jay Lown and Christine LaVelle several months ago. She says that the hires, who average 10-15 years of MBS origination experience, are also congruent with the firm's decision to focus more effort in the whole loan origination area, noting that future additions to the group would be at the junior level.

Salomon Smith Barney has formed a new collateralized debt obligation group called Global Portfolio Solutions by merging the cash flow and synthetic businesses at a global level. New York-based Janice Warne and Sumit Roy have been named global co-heads of the new group. They both keep their former assignments in addition to co-heading the new group. Warne continues to head global structured bonds, which is comprised of private placement, leasing securitization, project finance and enhanced equipment trust certificates. Roy keeps his global head of credit derivative hat as well. Rick Caplan, Nestor Dominguez and Doug Warren will co-head the U.S. part of the new CDO group out of New York while Tim Beaulac and Alan Shaffran will co-head the European component from London. All five report to Warne and Roy. They either did not return calls or declined to comment. Dan Noonan, a firm spokesman, declined to comment.

The final week of July continued the dismal issuance totals with the primary market remaining effectively closed for all but sporadic deals. Only $2.3 billion of investment- grade deals came to market during the week and the $16.2 billion total issuance in both investment-grade and high-yield for July is the lowest monthly issuance on record in the last seven years. The low issuance volumes and other evidence of the degree to which the extension of risk capital has shut down is causing widespread concern that we are entering a credit crunch and August's issuance volumes will be closely watched for evidence that the current frozen conditions are beginning to thaw.

Korea Korea Electric Power Corp (Kepco) received final submissions for a planned dollar denominated bond issue this week.

Australia UBS Warburg was last night (Thursday) due to complete a fixed price accelerated bookbuild launched yesterday morning to place A$330m of new Investa Property Group shares.

Arrangers Bank of Communications and ICBC Asia have been mandated for a HK$2.1bn fundraising for the redevelopment of the Hang Hau MTRC station through the borrowing entity Grand Creator Investment. SinoLand and Kerry Properties are jointly sponsoring the fundraising. The facility will be funded by the mandated arrangers and will not be launched into general syndication.

Australia's Transurban Finance shook off the remnants of last week's sour market sentiment to price its multi-tranche bond debut on Wednesday. The A$1.19bn deal had been keenly awaited by the market for several months and this strong interest helped the borrower launch the issue in a week when Swiss construction materials company Holcim had to cancel its transaction because of jittery secondary markets.

Sole mandated arranger HSBC has signed banks into the £450m acquisition facility for UK house builder Westbury Homes. Allied Irish Bank, Barclays, Danske Bank and Lloyds have put down £42.5m apiece as arrangers and Royal Bank of Scotland has committed £50m.