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Greece, Italy and Portugal launched a combined Eu10.5bn of syndicated government bonds this week, taking advantage of the demand for high quality paper that accompanied the panic in credit markets to build oversubscribed books and price their benchmarks inside their curves. Spain will soon add further supply, next week announcing the leads for its planned 15 year Bono. The Hellenic Republic enhanced its reputation among the peripheral government bond issuers with a highly successful Eu4bn five year transaction, building on the success of its Eu5bn 10 year bond launched in early January.

Bookrunners of securitisations of European assets (January 1 to December 31, 2001) Bookrunners of international Asian & Australian securitisations (January 1 to December 31, 2001)

Citigroup/SSB has introduced a Global Emerging Market Sovereign (GEMS) suite of indices, to cover dollar denominated external debt issued by sovereigns whose foreign debt is rated at or below BBB+/Baa1 by Standard & Poor's/Moody's. The GEMS suite consists of four major indices, starting with the core GEMS Index which is market capitalisation weighted according to the total amount of eligible bonds from each issuer and excludes sovereigns in default. The GEMS-Extended Index extends the core GEMS coverage to include bonds of sovereigns in default; the GEMS-Capped Index excludes defaulted sovereigns and limits exposure to any one issuer to $15bn; and the GEMS-Capped Extended Index combines the inclusion of defaulted sovereigns with the $15bn cap on individual markets.

Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development (HBOR) has dropped Credit Suisse First Boston, Daiwa SBCM Europe, Dresdner Bank and Morgan Stanley from the dealer panel off its euro500 million ($433.88 million) Euro-MTN programme. Schroder Salomon Smith Barney and Standard Bank London have been added as dealers. The shelf has just one trade outstanding - a three-year $38.50 million note that was issued in February last year.

Imperial Holdings has become the first corporate issuer in South Africa to complete a new transaction since the market was rocked by a surprise 100bp rate rise in January. The R800m ($69m) 12.75% six year bond was the second off the privately owned transport and logistics conglomerate's R2.5bn domestic MTN programme. It was priced by lead managers Investec and Merrill Lynch at a spread to South African treasuries of 104bp, slightly wider than the 93bp that Imperial's outstanding four year was trading at the time.

India Having recently completed a roadshow in Singapore, co-ordinating arrangers ANZ Investment Bank, BA Asia and Crédit Lyonnais are preparing to launch a $110m (equivalent) term loan for Reliance Industries into general syndication.

Invesco, the UK fund manager, has hired Habib Subjally as head of global equities and two other fund managers, as it seeks to build a bigger presence in the product. Tony Broccado, chief investment officer at Invesco, told EuroWeek that pension schemes were increasingly looking for funds that have a global profile, rather than sectoral.

The State of Israel finally dispatched yesterday (Thursday) the first of two benchmark bonds it mandated last August. The respectable Eu400m seven year deal via Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg proved that the state had recovered European investor confidence after the double blow of September 11 and the escalating Intifada. However, it is still not clear exactly where investor demand was coming from.

Brazil Corporacion Andina de Fomento (CAF), with joint arranger Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, is wrapping up syndication of the $82.5m bullet loan for electric utility Centrais Elétricas Brasileiras (Eletrobrás). The three year 'B' loan is priced at 400bp over Libor.

Phil Jones, the former global head of convertibles at Merrill Lynch, controversially resigned his post and moved into an apparently less senior position at Goldman Sachs this week. The departure is a U-turn for Jones, who just weeks earlier had said he was moving to Europe to spearhead a new focus on the region. Merrill Lynch bankers were shocked at the decision, claiming that despite the publicity behind the move, Jones had never been as interested in the European market. His new role at Goldman Sachs is based in New York.

Allied Irish Bank's FX trader John Rusnak has been grabbing the headlines this week but the MTN market has had its own share of vanishing acts recently. Deutsche Bank's star Euro-CP originator, Stephanie Sfakianos, who collected Deutsche Bank's Best Euro-CP house award at last year's MTNWeek awards, left the bank recently. But rumour has it she may resurface before long in a top UK bank. And UBS Warburg's Euro-CP and MTN originator, Christine Kassab, is leaving her duties on the origination desk to attend to other matters at the bank. Leak has not found out what these other matters are yet, but if she has a spare minute she might like to give Gavin Eddy and Paul Jones on the MTN desk a hand in snatching the lead back from Goldman Sachs, who insist on playing league table leapfrog. Christine will be replaced by a young lady named Pravda Bokil. And Deutsche Bank has announced two new additions to its Euro-CP trading desk, both of which will provide Leak with great opportunities for future nicknames. Dirk Pannewig joined the desk on February 1 from Deutsche's Frankfurt office, and Thorsten Benninghaus joined the desk in January from the US CP desk in New York.