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Karl Essig, one of the securitisation market's most influential bankers, has retired from Morgan Stanley. Essig, who was global co-head of the bank's securitised products group (SPG), had been planning to retire for more than two years and gave up his day-to-day responsibilities at the end of December, but his departure was only formally announced last week.

Banque AIG is to put its name to a $4 billion Euro-MTN programme. Goldman Sachs has scooped the arrangership. It is the first French issuer to join the MTN market in 2002 and the 13th French borrower to come to the market since the start of 2001. Goldman Sachs's appointment as arranger is the bank's first arrangership since December 2000 when it was appointed as joint-arranger to Natexis Banques Populaires's euro5 billion ($4.34 billion) programme. Banque AIG, a fully-licensed French bank, is the European entity of AIG Financial Products Corp, a member of American International Group (AIG). The AIG group also has a $25 billion note issuance programme under the name of AIG Sun America Institutional Funding II. The programme has $14.87 billion outstanding off 96 trades and was arranged by Merrill Lynch. The arranger is also the only named dealer on the panel.

Private Media Group, the Spanish pornography distributor, once again postponed its Neuer Markt listing on the final day of bookbuilding last Friday. The Spanish media group had initially planned to seek a secondary listing on the German growth exchange last October, but following the events of September 11 it took the decision to put off the secondary offering until the beginning of this year.

Nigeria EuroWeek understands that BNP Paribas, Crédit Lyonnais, Citigroup/SSB, Mediocredito and WestLB have the mandate to arrange around $1bn of project financing facilities for Nigeria LNG.

China Arrangers HSBC and Mizuho Financial have launched the $200m 12 year syndicated portion of the $708m offshore financing for Shanghai Secco Petrochemical Co.

AngloGold has taken advantage of the strong gold price and its position as one of the region's favourite credits to raise an oversubscription on its $500m three year loan. Although the deal was increased to $600m, banks that joined the facility had to be scaled back.

Europe * Duchess 1 CDO (tap)

* Landesbank Baden-Württemberg Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA

Do we hear that they are changing the palace guard at Lehman Brothers in London? Taking into account that the firm's New York operations were brought to a virtual standstill by the terrorist attacks on September 11, Lehman had an outstanding year in 2001 and ran rings around some of its larger competitors. We have already praised Lehman's chairman and CEO, Richard Fuld for exemplary leadership in those dark hours. Yes, it's true that he never sent us an e-mail to say thank you, but he's a busy man and is probably preoccupied with good deeds and ensuring that his staff receive excellent bonuses. In the London office there should be good bonuses for Marco Figus who has been leading the debt capital markets group with the skill and panache which has become his trademark. In the primary markets and in syndicate, Lehman always punches well above its weight and when we speak to borrowers, there is fulsome praise for Lehman's coverage in Italy (some say that it should almost be referred to the monopolies commission) and the firm's financial institutions group. Are there any chinks in the Lehman debt armour? The only slightly negative comments we hear are that the firm's trading capabilities in Europe sometimes do not match those of New York. We have no doubt that the European CEO, the formidably clever and still absurdly young Jeremy Isaacs, is already addressing this issue.

With European M&A volumes continuing to disappoint, news this week that US-based company AEP is selling off its UK interest Seaboard for around £1.5bn was a much needed boost to a loan market desperate for corporate activity. AEP has been discussing the sale of its West Sussex arm since its merger with Central and South West Corp in the middle of 2000. Advising AEP on the sale of Seaboard are ABN Amro and Citigroup/SSSB.

Bookrunners on France Télécom’s jumbo Eu15bn refinancing spoke of their anger this week at the behaviour of some of the deal’s mandated lead arrangers, who are believed to have advised junior syndicate banks not to join the loan in primary syndication but instead buy the asset in the secondary market.