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Morocco The advisory mandate for a $700m expansion financing at the Samir oil refinery has been awarded to Deutsche Bank and local financing house, BCME Capital.

Frank Bramble, the chairman of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) subsidiary Allfirst Financial, has announced his retirement, effective June. A further six senior executives have been fired. The boards of Allfirst and AIB have decided to dismiss: Allfirst's executive vice president and treasurer David Cronin; Jan Palmer, a senior vice president in treasury operations administration; Robert Ray, a senior vice president of treasury funds management; assistant vice president of operations and financial analysis Lawrence Smith; the head of internal audit, Michael Husich, and Lou Slifker, team leader in internal audit.

The UK life sciences firm Amersham has completed a £400m accelerated bookbuild to finance its acquisition of the shares in Amersham Biosciences that it did not already own. The deal, which was led by Morgan Stanley and Hoare Govett, takes Amersham's control of the business to 100%, from 55%. Amersham had previously hoped to float the company, but shelved this plan last year as the equity markets closed.

Australia Arrangers ANZ Investment Bank and Citigroup/SSB Australia have launched a A$630m facility for National Rail Consortium to sub-underwriters.

Hong Kong BOCI Capital, Citigroup/SSB, Hang Seng Bank, HSBC and SG have been officially mandated for the HK$1.6bn five year revolver for Shanghai Industrial Holdings.

Asia Pacific * Bauhinia MBS Ltd Series 2002-1

Transactions increased: * Deutsche Australia Ltd

Brazil's Banco Itau scored a coup this week by pricing a $250m five year final maturity MT-100 securitisation as much as 50bp tighter on a fixed rate basis than recent comparable transactions. The triple-A XL Capital-wrapped offering, led by Bank of America, was priced at 70bp over six month Libor, in the middle of its 60bp-75bp price range and at an equivalent level to 130bp over Treasuries.

Barclays Capital has created the new position of head of Italian debt capital markets, and has hired former Merrill Lynch banker Ottavio Muzi-Falconi to fill it. The firm is keen to win more mandates in the Italian market, which is an important part of any bank's European DCM franchise and shows potential for growth this year.

The £475m debt facility backing the £750m buy-out of Homebase DIY from Sainsbury, sponsored by Schroder Ventures and syndicated in November 2001, has been recapitalisation. At a bank meeting yesterday (Thursday) in London, members of the original syndicate were offered a 50bp fee for sticking to the deal and supporting the recapitalisation.

BNP Paribas this week hired two senior securitisation originators - Razi Amin in Hong Kong and Örn Greif in London. A veteran of the mid-1990s European securitisation market, Amin had for the last five years been head of securitisation at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, working on such high profile deals as The Wharf (Holdings) Ltd's $575m securitisation of its Harbour City office and shopping complex in 1999.

It has been a mixed week for the Kazakh Eurobond pipeline. On the positive side, Bank TuranAlem (BTA) and Kazkommertsbank (KKB) both officially revealed the mandate holders for their prospective Eurobonds. BTA chose Deutsche Bank as a sole lead, while KKB picked JP Morgan to accompany ABN Amro. The decisions will come as a blow to Merrill Lynch in particular, which had held a now lapsed joint mandate with ABN Amro for KKB.