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Rating: Aaa/AAA Amount: $2bn

F&C Management and Harbour Vest Partners (UK) Ltd have been appointed by Shropshire County Pension Fund to run two of its strategically diversified funds. F&C has been given the mandate to invest £30m in emerging market equities, starting on July 1, while HarbourVest will invest £20m in a private equity fund of funds. F&C replaces Schroder Investment Management, which had underperformed its MSCI Emerging Markets Free index. However, Phil Guy, treasury manager for the Shropshire fund, told EuroWeek that Schroders had outperformed its other benchmarks for assets invested in Japanese equities and Pacific Basin ex-Japan.

Amount: Eu1.755bn Issue price: 100.00

GECC's various fundraising exercises dominated a market weakened by falling equities this week. Success in the dollar market with a $6bn resettable, puttable FRN and a $1bn 30 year non-call five retail targeted bond resulted in a reduction of the borrower's fixed rate euro transaction to Eu2bn and the addition of a Eu1bn two year FRN. Investors in Europe took comfort from the announcement by GE that the company may not tap the euro market again this year and, if it does, it will not be until the third quarter. SCA and Renault proved that there is strong demand for corporate paper in euros, both companies achieving oversubscribed books and strongly performing deals.

Rating: Aaa/AAA Amount: $2bn (fungible with $3bn issue launched 29/05/02)

The Eu150m five year facility for Rautaruukki is due to be signed in the next two weeks. The deal was oversubscribed and is due to be increased to Eu200m.

Citigroup/SSSB completed a Eu250m placement in Stora Enso, the Finnish forestry company, yesterday (Thursday) afternoon on behalf of the Finnish government. The deal, which was launched after the close in Finland, consisted of 17m shares priced at Eu14.7, less than a 1% discount to yesterday's close. The offering represented 2.3% of the company and was the second sale that Citigroup/SSSB has conducted in Stora Enso on behalf of the government this year. In March, some 23m shares in the forestry group were sold at Eu14.15 per share.

Amount: Eu1.335bn Legal maturity: December 7, 2007

Rating: A3/BBB+/BBB+ Amount: Eu750m

Arrangers HSBC and Commerzbank will close the $100m three year facility for United Bank of Kuwait (UBK) next week and signing will take place soon after. The deal was oversubscribed by $10m but the borrower will not be accepting the increase.

Landsbanki Island has added CDC IXIS Capital Markets to its $1 billion Euro-MTN programme. It is the second Euro-MTN programme CDC IXIS Capital Markets has been appointed to this year.

The £1.5bn loan for Land Securities was launched into general syndication yesterday afternoon (Thursday). Barclays Capital (joint bookrunner), Citigroup/SSSB (joint bookrunner), Lloyds TSB (joint bookrunner, documentation, facility agent), and the Royal Bank of Scotland (joint bookrunner) are lead arranging and underwriting the three year deal.