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Hungarian forint made a good showing in other currencies today. Two deals were closed with outstandings of $53.20 million. Volkswagen International Finance closed the largest of the two trades: a Ft10 billion 2005 ($35.46 million) trade that pays a coupon of 7% and was issued at a price of 99.925%. TD Securities led the deal. The other trade came from European Investment Bank. The Ft5 billion offer goes out to February 2003 and was led by Caboto-Gruppo. The MTN offers a coupon of 7.5% and will be issued on February 19 2002. The largest of the day's volumes came in sterling. Spintab issued two deals: the largest was a £

Twenty-five deals were closed in other currencies. And again the majority of deals were done in Hong Kong dollar. HSBC (Netherlands) continued its run in the currency and self-led five HK$80 million ($10.26 million) MTNs that go out to March this year. Credit Agricole Indosuez also self-led four deals that go out to March this year. The largest trade was a HK$15 million note and the smallest was a HK$5 million offer. Three deals were closed in sterling. AIG SunAmerica did the largest: a £

Sterling was responsible for the largest volumes in other currencies. Just over £

Pemex, the state owned Mexican oil concern, will today (Friday) attempt to issue a $1.5bn 144a dual tranche offering, one of its biggest plain vanilla bond transactions in the US market. The deal, to be lead managed by JP Morgan and Citigroup/SSB, will be split into seven and 20 year tranches according to demand.

* Wüstenrot Hypothekenbank AG Rating: AAA

The Eu2bn IPO of Autoroutes du Sud, the French motorway operator, looks set to be the first of the planned French privatisations to be completed this year. Gaz de France and Electricité de France (EdF), the two French utilities, are also planning to complete share sales in the near future. But they will have to await the completion of the French elections, due to take place between April and June, before any firm decision is taken. An announcement by Autoroutes du Sud this week confirmed that the government is keen to complete the sale by the end of March or beginning of April in a further attempt to reduce France's deficit.

Renault was a casualty of poor Japanese investor sentiment this week, when the French auto manufacturer was forced to postpone its second Samurai bond issue. Joint lead managers Daiwa SMBC and Merrill Lynch were due to launch the ¥35bn five year deal on Wednesday, but the collapse into bankruptcy of Enron and Kmart has severely affected Japanese investors' appetite for offshore corporate paper.

Royal Bank of Scotland Financial Markets is beefing up its UK corporate origination team in the expectation of another bumper year of fixed income issuance. The bank has recruited senior originator Russell Maybury as a managing director, UK corporates. He joins next week from UBS Warburg, where he was most recently executive director, UK debt capital markets.

EuroWeek conducted a straw poll this week of emerging markets sovereign credit strategists at eight investment banks, to discover their views of where the markets are headed in the coming year. Here are the results.

Finland The syndication of the Eu110m loan facility for Perlos has been closed by arranger Sampo Bank.

Carlos Conde, the former co-head of pan-European equity capital markets at JP Morgan, has re-emerged at SG. Conde will be sole head within the French firm. He started work on Tuesday and reports to Stephen Brisby and Marc Litzler, who co-head the global investment banking division with Kim Fennebresque.

* World Bank Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA