Search results for

Ulrich Kastner, director in the asset securitisation group at WestLB in London, has left to join Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein's debt origination team. On gardening leave since the start of May, Kastner will start at Dresdner in August working on structured finance products. He is expected to continue to focus on Germany as he did at WestLB, where he worked for around four years.

Greece Opap, the government owned Greek lottery and football pools operator, is to go ahead with a Eu500m secondary offering which will see the freefloat of the group increased from 5% to 25%.

Czech Republic Recent Czech parliamentary elections will result in a smoother progression towards EU membership, although improvements in the republic's fiscal position are less certain, according to Fitch.

KBC (joint bookrunner) and Lloyds (joint bookrunner, facility and documentation agent) have signed banks into an £80m three year revolver for Pendragon plc. Before the loan was launched, Allied Irish Bank joined the facility as an arranger.

Poland was one of the few issuers to benefit from the market chaos resulting from the accounting scandal at WorldCom this week with the launch of a tightly priced $1bn 10 year bond, its first dollar deal for five years. The SEC-registered issue, lead managed by JP Morgan and Citigroup/SSSB, paid a coupon of 6.25% and an issue price of 99.209, giving a spread of 158bp over Treasuries. The sovereign was able to shrug off US investor concern and increased the size of its offering from an original target of $750m to a final issue size of $1bn. The book was scaled back from $2.4bn.

ING Bank has signed banks into the Eu50m 10 year loan for Banco Itau. Banco BPI and LB Kiel committed Eu9.5m to the deal as arrangers. Hamburigsche Landesbank has committed Eu7.2m as a co-arranger. BNL, BayernLB and Caixa are lead managers with takes of Eu4.8m.

Poland was one of the few issuers to benefit from the market chaos resulting from the accounting scandal at WorldCom this week with the launch of a tightly priced $1bn 10 year bond, its first dollar deal for five years. The SEC-registered issue, lead managed by JP Morgan and Citigroup/SSSB, paid a coupon of 6.25% and an issue price of 99.209, giving a spread of 158bp over Treasuries. The sovereign was able to shrug off US investor concern and increased the size of its offering from an original target of $750m to a final issue size of $1bn. The book was scaled back from $2.4bn.

The decision of Prada, the Italian fashion house, to cancel its IPO this week is a further reminder of the difficulties that face companies looking to raise money on the European equity markets this year. Prada's announcement on Wednesday that it was not going to go ahead with its planned Eu1.1bn offering marks the third time that the Italian fashion group has postponed a flotation on the Italian exchange. But the decision was regarded by European equity capital market bankers as the only pragmatic choice to make.

Amount: Eu1.508bn Rating: Moody's/Fitch

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA Amount: C$50m (fungible with C$100m issue launched 31/01/02)

EuroWeek understands that bidding is under way to arrange the $300m facility for Qatar Fuel Additives Company Limited (QAFAC). Bids are due in by today (Friday) and a mandate could be awarded as early as next week.

Renault has signed a Baa2-rated euro2 billion ($1.96 billion) Euro-MTN shelf with Deutsche Bank as arranger - giving the bank its 10th MTN arrangership this year, according to MTNWare. The dealers are Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Salomon Smith Barney, and Tokyo-Mitsubishi.