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The true costs of asset management will be disclosed to pension fund trustees from next year, according to draft proposals for a Best Practice Disclosure Code on transaction costs published by the Investment Management Association. IMA has picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the Myners Review, which challenged fund managers to find better ways of enabling trustees to understand and manage costs incurred on their behalf. "The intention is that the disclosure code should be an easily assimilated standard framework for information," said Lindsay Tomlinson, chief executive of Barclays Global Investors, and deputy chairman of IMA, speaking last week at the investment conference of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), which assisted in drafting the code.

Last week's much-lauded $11bn global bond from General Electric Capital Corp (GECC) was this week hit by a wave of bad press, including a public condemnation of GE's management and financing strategies by Pimco's influential fund manager, Bill Gross. Gross, who manages one of the world's largest bond funds, launched a vicious attack on GECC in an article posted on Pimco's website. In the same week, GECC also suffered from rumours, which it denied, that it was about to spend $8bn to acquire CIT Group.

Christian Meissner and Matthew Westerman have won promotion to be the new co-heads of equity capital markets at Goldman Sachs. Meissner and Westerman replace Tim Bunting, who earlier this year became co-head of global ECM alongside David Solomon.

ICI completed its £890m rights issue yesterday (Thursday) when it sold a £134m rump offering to investors. Bankers claimed the deal was a success, given the strength of the share price and the 91% take-up of the rights. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg underwrote the offering. "If you bought ICI stock on the day the rights issue was launched, you would have made a 25% profit," said one ECM banker who worked on the deal.

The International Finance Corp (IFC) yesterday (Thursday) opened the El Dorado foreign bond market in Colombia with an inaugural Ps225bn ($100m) Colombian peso deal. The five year IFC bond was launched at par with a yield of 13.7% and achieved a spread that was 50bp inside the government's 2006 TES benchmark.

The International Finance Corp (IFC) yesterday (Thursday) opened the El Dorado foreign bond market in Colombia with an inaugural Ps225bn ($100m) Colombian peso deal. The five year IFC bond was launched at par with a yield of 13.7% and achieved a spread that was 50bp inside the government's 2006 TES benchmark.

Rhineland Funding Capital Corporation is the name of an asset-backed CP programme that has been set up with IKB Deutsche Industriebank as its investment adviser. The programme is for the issuance of Euro-CP notes and the dealers are Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. The programme was arranged by CIBC, which has two existing global asset-backed CP programmes called Great Lakes Funding and Superior Funding. Moody's has assigned a short-term rating of P-1 to the programme and Fitch has given it an F1 rating. The programme was signed on Friday, March 15 and although it has only been in the market one week, it started funding on Wednesday, March 20, and has already raised $1 billion. The arranger says: "We met our funding target straight away and expect to have $1.3 billion outstanding by the end of March this year."

The Republic of Italy has embarked on an unprecedented borrowing spree in the last seven days, accessing the dollar, euro and yen markets for more than Eu5.5bn equivalent. A $2bn June 2005 global bond was priced last Friday (March 15), a Eu2.5bn tap of the August 2017 BTP was priced yesterday (Thursday) and a ¥100bn increase of the October 2006 global issue will be priced today (Friday).

The Republic of Italy has embarked on an unprecedented borrowing spree in the last seven days, accessing the dollar, euro and yen markets for more than Eu5.5bn equivalent. A $2bn June 2005 global bond was priced last Friday (March 15), a Eu2.5bn tap of the August 2017 BTP was priced yesterday (Thursday) and a ¥100bn increase of the October 2006 global issue will be priced today (Friday).

India The ¥14.24bn 5-1/2 year term loan for Reliance Industries has been closed by co-ordinating arrangers ANZ Investment Bank, Bank of America and Crédit Lyonnais. The co-ordinating arrangers committed ¥1.435bn apiece.

ING completed its first lead managed convertible issue since 1999 this week as it raised Eu125m for Draka Holding, the Dutch holding company. The last time ING led an equity linked issue was for Guillemot, the computer software and hardware developer. The Dutch bank underwrote and led the Eu30m convertible issue in June 1999.

Uncertainty over the funding of the London Underground Public-Private Partnership (PPP) deepened this week with news reports that the UK transport secretary, Stephen Byers, has announced that the provisional letter of comfort issued by the government guaranteeing around 95% of the project debt for the first 7-1/2 years will not feature in the final contract. Bankers close to the deal said that as far as the two financings are concerned there has been no change. However, the news highlights the political risk attached to PPP financing. If the government will not provide an effective guarantee, the deals will not be bankable.