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Wonders will never cease. Some time ago market maverick Mike mtn-i Timms came up with the far-fetched idea of linking the coupon of an MTN to the box-office sales of a blockbusting film and we laughed at him, thinking this was a madcap idea. But it has come to pass and one adventurous dealer has actually gone and done it. Was this an April fool's joke? Leak hopes it was not linked to Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Morgan Stanley's originator, Deborah Glenn, is turning her back on the MTN market and is moving over to UK corporates in the corporate coverage team at the bank. Commerzbank's Gayle Turner has been pushing out the boat. She is a keen sailor and could be seen racing her yacht around some English lakes last weekend. She was in two races and came in fourth and third. And other MTN-ers have been making the most of the long weekends in Europe. CSFB's Simon Hill threw a wild party at his country residence. Commerzbank's Julia Abbott and Barclays's Monja Blattner have been off skiing, only to find a lot of slush on the piste. Since the skiing was off, Leak concludes that Monja must have found another pastime (some Alpine liquor maybe) because she reports spotting some large ostriches and sheep on the Italian slopes. Sheems shtrange...

Brazil BBA Creditanstalt intends to be the next Brazilian bank to issue a three year Eurobond, having mandated WestLB for a $50m transaction to yield around 7.5%. That implies a much higher yield than Banco Itau's $100m three year issue last week, but bankers point out that Itau's 6.75% 2005s are rated Ba2/BB-, whereas BBA Creditanstalt is unrated.

Qatar The State of Qatar's $450m five year facility has been well received by the market.

* Goldman Sachs has strengthened its European shares business with the hire of Philip Hylander, the former global head of trading (ex-USA) at Deutsche Bank. Hylander will be co-head of the European shares business, alongside Robert Markwick and Hugo Van Vredenburch. He moves from Deutsche along with Matthew Cyzer, who was co-head of European sales trading at Deutsche and will be a senior member of the European sales trading team at Goldman. Both will be managing directors.

Denmark Morgan Stanley and Carnegie sold a Dkr1.7bn (Eu228m) block of Lundbeck, the Danish drugmaker, on Wednesday.

The Russian government this week appointed Morgan Stanley to underwrite a $700m sale in Lukoil, the country's largest oil company. Alexander Braverman, the first deputy head of the Russian ministry of economic development, said on Wednesday that Russia plans to sell a 5.9% stake in the company in June or July.

High yield investors offered a muted reaction to the impending default of telecoms group NTL, which announced on April 1 that it was withholding interest payments on certain high yield notes. There is now a 30 day grace period before the default is official, and it will be one of the biggest bond defaults in history. One investor said that the impending default had already been priced in back in December. Another said that the only real interest in the news was how the default might accelerate a corporate restructuring and a potential merger with Telewest and equity investment by Liberty Media or maybe even AOL Time Warner.

All three leading rating agencies have assigned ratings to the newly created Mizuho Bank and Mizuho Corporate Bank. The new entities were formed this week through the re-organization of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB), Fuji Bank (FB) and Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ). Standard & Poor's has assigned its triple-B long-term and A-3 short-term counterparty credit ratings. Moody's has given an A-3 long-term issuer rating, while Fitch gives it an A- long-term rating. However, all three agencies have negative outlooks on the new entities. Mizuho Holdings, the group head, was established in September 2000. The company was formed as a result of the consolidation of the operations of DKB, FB, and IBJ. With assets of ¥164 trillion ($1.24 trillion), Mizuho is the world's biggest banking group in asset terms. By comparison, Citigroup has assets totalling $1.05 trillion. Since its formation, Mizuho has made an impact on the Euro-MTN market as one of its busiest bookrunners. It is a dealer on nearly 200 Euro-MTN facilities, but much of its business comes through reverse enquiry. It has led 189 private placements in 2002, second only to Salomon Smith Barney.

JP Morgan last week offered ABS investors rare exposure to emerging market sovereign risk, with a collateralised debt obligation worth $216.6m. Managed by Barep Asset Management, a division of SG, the deal will parcel fixed and floating rate bonds, loans and synthetic obligations issued by emerging market states, with a maximum concentration of 5% for any single obligor.

Securitisation specialists have begun to digest the surprise announcement two weeks ago from Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, that it planned to lay down hard rules for state securitisation accounting treatment in July. The move threatens to undermine one of the chief motivations for states to securitise - that EU governments can reduce debt to GDP ratios towards the target levels prescribed by the Maastricht treaty by using securitisation instead of normal borrowing.

ProLogis, the US-based property company that specialises in distribution warehouses, last week launched its second European securitisation. But in a change from the company's original plans the transaction was backed by a loan secured on only French properties in the outskirts of Paris. In 1999 the company set up the ProLogis European Properties Fund to run the European operations of the US ProLogis Trust. The fund now owns around Eu1.6bn of distribution warehousing in Europe and is expected to increase this to Eu3bn within the next few years, based on the fund's equity commitments.

This week saw the first securitisation of rents from student accommodation for over two years, when Unite Group plc securitised rental flows from a portfolio of student and NHS key worker accommodation. Investors were initially wary of exposure to the low income world of UK students and only six of the 47 properties are occupied by the NHS. In February, Moody's downgraded two tranches of notes from the first securitisation of UK student loans, Greenwich NatWest's £1.03bn THESIS No 1 plc of March 1998.