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Never let it be said that we are not sometimes slightly ahead of the news. In issue 737 of EuroWeek on January 25, we said that CSFB's John Mack was about to ring the changes in his floundering investment banking division, and that many senior heads would be used as croquet balls for Mr Mack's sumptuous country estate outside New York. And who did we name as the man most likely to take over the struggling division? We said that Mack would turn to his trusty former colleague, Walid Chammah, who would cut the CSFB investment banking prima donnas down to size and off at the knees. And what happened? Before you could say, "did Linda Robinson in John Mack's office receive our Valentine card?", there was the grand announcement that Chammah was joining CSFB as co-head of investment banking.

Banca Nazionale del Lavoro has doubled the debt limit of its Euro-MTN programme from euro5 billion ($4.35 billion) to euro10 million. The debt facility was signed in 1993 via Banca Nazionale del Lavoro and UBS Warburg. The programme has $3.6 billion outstanding off 72 trades.

BASF, the German chemicals manufacturer, has lifted the ceiling off its global CP programme from $2.3 billion to $5 billion. The programme was signed in July 1999 via Citibank. The shelf is rated P-1 by Moody's and A-1+ by Standard & Poor's.

The continued volatility of stocks across all sectors in 2002 has left little opportunity for issuers to raise money through the equity markets, the Eu1.3bn BHW debacle last week being the latest blow to the sector. This week EuroWeek conducted a straw poll of 10 ECM bankers and five fund managers in an attempt to analyse how this latest flop has affected the confidence of bankers and investors alike.

Isma.info, the online delivery of quoted bid and offer bond prices compiled by the International Securities Market Association, was officially launched this week. The initiative takes ISMA into an increasingly competitive market in screen-based online services, populated by other data suppliers as well as real-time news feeds, portfolio analytics, risk management tools and trading platforms. The new service replaces ISMA's so-called "stripey book", the weekly international securities guide published for the last twenty years by the Zurich-headquartered company. The isma.info brochure notes: "Time has moved on. And so have we."

Issues from triple-B credits should be among the most sought after assets within fixed income this year. Going overweight in lower investment grade credit was the consensus recommendation amongst investors gathered at the Euromoney Bond Investors Congress this week, although price volatility, ratings unreliability and the increasing probability of Japan's economic collapse were also at the forefront of investors' minds. "The day of reckoning is fast approaching for Japan," said Dan Roberts, chief investment officer at Pareto Partners.