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Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) has finally entered the home stretch in its bid to launch a cash tender and a new $350m 10 year issue. After several delays, the telecoms group is on the verge of launching the deal, which will help alleviate a $1.6bn debt pile-up that is maturing between 2002 and 2004.

BT Office Trust and Westfield Trust benefited from quiet conditions when they returned to the domestic bond market this week. With the country's primary business pipeline looking slow, more investor attention was focused upon the property trusts' two issues. BT Office Trust launched its A$150m 4-1/2 year transaction on Tuesday, which it comfortably placed with investors. ANZ Investment Bank and Deutsche Bank were joint lead managers for the trust's second foray into the market, with Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg as co-managers.

Merrill Lynch and client QBE Insurance tried to cover all the angles for QBE stakeholders on Monday night as Australia's leading insurer tapped the global market for $250m in the form of a 20 year zero coupon convertible bond. Not only did Merrill Lynch sell the first zero coupon CB for an Australian company, but the investment bank gave investors and QBE the comfort of underwriting the purchase of underlying shares that is so often associated with equity-linked issues. In so doing, Merrill Lynch introduced to Australia the happy meal concept it first developed in the US - everyone is supposed to leave the table satisfied.

Rating: Aa3/AA Amount: C$50m (fungible with the C$300m issue first launched 08/11/01)

Rating: Aa1/AA-/AA Amount: Eu130m subordinated debt

Türkiye Garanti Bankasi has awarded the mandate to arrange its Eu200m one year bullet facility. Joint mandated arrangers Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Mizuho (DKB) and Deutsche Bank are bookrunners. Sumitomo is facility agent. ING is documentation agent and Standard Chartered is responsible for the information memorandum. The other joint mandated arrangers are Alpha Bank, the Bank of New York, Commerzbank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, HVB Group, RBS, TD Securities and Wachovia Bank.

Joint arrangers HSBC and Commerzbank this week launched a $100m three year loan for United Bank of Kuwait (UBK) into syndication. The facility pays a margin of 35bp over Libor. Invitations have been sent out to a number of relationship banks and responses are expected within the next two weeks. A banker close to the deal told EuroWeek that there is good initial appetite for the credit.

Rating: A1/A/A+ Amount: Eu50m (fungible with Eu50m launched 13/02/02)

There was puzzlement this week over speculation that the Tawellah A2 independent water and power project (IWPP) may be refinanced. With two new IWPPs to be financed this year, bankers expressed surprise that Tawellah A2 would seek to tap the markets at this stage. A refinancing competing against new assets in the same sector and market is not seen as an attractive proposition by the market. Nor do bankers feel that Tawellah A2 would be able to achieve a significant reduction in funding costs through a refinancing.

Rating: Aaa/AAA Amount: A$210m

It hasn't been the happiest of times for Swiss banks over the past six months. Poor Credit Suisse is being hammered by the local Zurich press and chairman, Lukas Mühlemann, is hanging on by his fingertips. The chances of Credit Suisse First Boston staying independent is now, according to the bookmakers, 18 months at the outside. Profits at Vontobel and Julius Baer, have dropped off and Switzerland's wealthiest investor, Martin Ebner, has run into a brick wall in Scandinavia. Is UBS therefore the country's last great hope of maintaining some credibility in the global banking amphitheatre? We always thought that UBS was a rather underrated shop - the impression is that it genuinely wants to be a Bergdorf Goodman or Saks Fifth Avenue, but when you open the door, you find yourself in a local 7-Eleven.

A dismal showing by AT&T, which had to widen price talk by 25bp-30bp to execute a $3bn three tranche issue, sent spreads on telecoms issues some 15bp wider, making life difficult for Olivetti, which is expected to launch a Eu2bn issue today (Friday) via Barclays, Citigroup/SSSB, Lehman and UBM. The two tranche Olivetti deal has had to be repriced, with the five year portion upped from mid-swaps plus 135bp to 160bp and the 10 year element from plus 165bp to 190bp.