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With 11 European telco deals worth $48.67bn up for refinancing in 2002, the telecoms sector is under the scrutiny of loan bankers hungry for business in a dry market. All eyes are on the secondary trading of France Télécom's (FT) refinancing, the primary syndication of Ericsson's $743.676m loan and H3G in Italy.

ThyssenKrupp, the German steel and engineering group, took advantage of a good stock run this week to sell a Eu89m stake in Kone, the Finnish lift manufacturer. The deal was led by UBS Warburg and Evli Securities, and according to a banker the company was an ideal stock for the current economic environment. "Kone is a cyclical stock, but a large part of its business is services which are stable," the banker said. "We felt confident that it was the right kind of stock in this environment."

Televisa, keen to take advantage of an extraordinary flight by high grade US investors out of the troubled corporate dollar market into Mexican bonds, will next week begin a roadshow for a $250m 20 or 30 year bond. The deal will be jointly led by Citigroup/SSB, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, the Mexican media company's three relationship banks, which extended the company a bridge loan last year that it now intends to refinance.

Thirty-two notes were announced in US dollar and Freddie Mac's $250 million five-year note took nearly half the volume. HypoVereinsbank announced a $20 million FRN via Bank of America. The coupon is linked to 3m $Libor +7 basis points and the trade goes out to March 2005. Oesterreichische Kontrollbank issued a $94 million note with a maturity of four years and six months via Mizuho. The coupon is paid annually at a rate of 4.07% and the note is sold as a Uridashi offering in Japan. At the long end Salomon Smith Barney was bookrunner off two notes for Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg (LBBW) and for General Electric Capital Corp. LBBW's $10 million note goes out 10 years and General Electric Capital Corp's $20 million note goes out to 2017.

Lloyds TSB and Aareal (formerly DePfa Bank) have the mandate to arrange a £335m six year facility for The City of London Office Unit Trust. Deutsche Postbank, Landesbank Sachsen Girozentrale and Westdeutsche Immobilienbank have joined the loan in senior syndication.

Globals * European Investment Bank

Walt Disney Co launched and priced a blowout $1.75bn global bond in just six hours yesterday (Thursday), taking advantage of a continued flight to quality as the US corporate bond market takes time to recover from the after-effects of the Enron debacle. The deal was swamped with around $9bn of orders according to one investor, enabling lead managers Citigroup/SSB and JP Morgan to increase two tranche issue from $1.35bn to $1.75bn and price the 10 and 30 year tranches inside price talk.

Venture Production, the UK-based oil and gas company, is looking to brave the equity markets in the next few weeks with a £25m IPO. According to Bruce Dingwall, Venture's chief executive, the company is planning to take advantage of the positive environment surrounding its industry to secure future financing. Founded in 1997, Venture was created to eliminate the exploration risk associated with many oil developments by targeting stranded assets. The company buys these up at low costs and develops them.

Austria Mandated lead arranger RZB launched syndication of the Eu127m eight year loan for Voest-Alpine this week.

Bruce Wasserstein has persuaded his former Wasserstein Perella colleague Charles Ward to join Lazard as president. Ward's newly created role will be mainly concerned with Lazard operations and management. He will have less contact with clients than the deputy chairmen, Marcus Agius, Gerardo Braggiotti, Kenneth Jacob, Georges Ralli and Jeffrey Rosen. He will not have a fixed base, but will move between offices as clients demand.

Global bonds for the Republic of Italy ($2bn), the EIB ($3bn) and Fannie Mae ($6bn) dominated the dollar sector this week. Both the Italian and EIB transactions are to be priced today (Friday) and have benefited from the developing trend among investors to diversify away from US agency debt. Italy has provided the dollar market with its first non-agency benchmark in the 10 year sector, while the EIB is targeting the more widely sought-after five year maturity.

Xstrata yesterday (Thursday) provided a much needed boost to the equity capital markets when it announced a £650m equity offering to finance the $2.5bn acquisition of coal assets from Glencore, the Swiss mineral resources trader. The deal will be the first big-ticket marketed offering in Europe this year, and is a coup for JP Morgan, which is financial adviser to Xstrata, global co-ordinator and bookrunner for the equity offering, and a lead arranger and bookrunner on a $2bn loan facility.