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HypoVereinsbank (HVB) had its A+ long-term counterparty credit and senior unsecured debt ratings cut to A by Standard & Poor's (S&P) yesterday, February 21. The German bank has over $18 billion outstanding off its euro50 million ($43.49 million) Euro-MTN facility. In 2002 it has issued just five notes totalling approximately $135 million-worth of debt. HVB's five subsidiaries have also had their ratings lowered. Bank Austria and HVB Real Estate Bank have been lowered from A+ to A and WestHyp, WurttHyp and Pfandbrief Bank International have been lowered from A to A- by S&P.

International Business Machines (IBM) became the first borrower of the year to successfully access the Samurai market this week. The US corporate overcame negative sentiment towards offshore borrowers to launch a ¥26bn three year transaction. Nomura and Daiwa SMBC were joint bookrunners, with Credit Suisse First Boston, Merrill Lynch, Mizuho Securities, Nikko Salomon Smith Barney and Tokyo Mitsubishi Securities as co-managers.

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, a New York-based research provider, has been named in a study by a Swedish environmental research authority as one of the leading providers of socially responsible investment (SRI) research. Innovest, which has over $900m under direct sub-advisory mandates and launched a new fund this week with ABF Capital Management, was awarded the accolade by MISTRA, the foundation for strategic environmental research.

Jessops, the UK photograph developer, is in talks with a number of banks about the possibility of floating, nearly 18 months after it first tried. John Crabtree, the finance director of Jessops, told EuroWeek that chairman Tim Brookes was talking to advisers about the financing options open to the business. He played down speculation that Goldman Sachs was about to be awarded a mandate. "We are in conversation with Goldman Sachs, as with other banks, but we have not signed anything," he said.

Invensys this week quashed speculation that it was planning a rights issue with the announcement of a far reaching restructuring plan. The stock fell nearly 20% after the UK-based engineering company said that it planned to make £2.3bn of disposals and raise a further £350m in debt.

The Kazakh government dismayed some sections of the market on Wednesday by incorporating state owned oil company Kazakhoil into a new integrated oil and gas company, KazMunaiGaz (KMG), only a week after Kazakhoil issued its debut Eu125m five year bond via ABN Amro. The new company also incorporates TransNeftGaz (TNG), the holding company for oil and gas pipeline companies KazTransOil (KTO) and KazTransGaz (KTG).

The plan hatched by Islandsbanki's Ingvar Ragnarsson and Bill Symington to keep the market away from their brennivin on Wednesday night failed miserably. The threat of shark meat and ram's testicles at the Thorrablot party was not enough to deter the hardy MTNers, with more turning up than ever before, including Deutsche's ex-head of desk Tiina Lee and Dresdner's Jon Saunders. UBS Warburg's Paul Jones felt obliged to eat the pickled shark as Bjarni Armannsson, Islandsbanki's CEO, was handing it round. But Gavin Eddy, UBS's head of desk, was not to be seen. He was recovering from going on a survival course on Salisbury Plain. HSBC's Anne-Marie Ganatra was showing new boy Mark the ropes, and CSFB's Simon Hill was showing off his matching tie and cuff links. Fergus Kiely from HSBC and Brian McCarthy from Lehman Brothers have much better reasons to turn to the bottle. They are both getting married this year. Rob Nankivell from JPMorgan is taking a six-month sabbatical and will be surfing around Europe. Rachel King has stepped down from ABN Amro's MTN desk to find a comfier seat elsewhere in the bank. And Garrath Fulford, having left JPMorgan last summer, has been hired by an unidentified bank.

Oman The market has given a strong reception to the syndication of the $1.364bn loan refinancing for Oman LNG LLC. The deal is already oversubscribed and a number of banks are still outstanding. The deal's arrangers expect a large oversubscription when the books are finally closed, probably next week.

Event and political risk raised their profiles in the UK's troubled public-private partnerships (PPP) sector once again this week with rumours and counter-rumours circulating around the fate of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) PPP. Early in the week there were reports that the four mandated lead arrangers and underwriters of the £1.45bn financing backing the PPP - Abbey National Treasury Services, Bank of America, Barclays Capital and HBOS - were threatening to force NATS into administration as the company faced a liquidity crisis as a result of the sharp drop in airline traffic following September 11.

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.

* Clearnet and MTS have signed an agreement with Cassa di Compensazione e Garanzia, the clearing house for the Italian bourse. The three parties intend to set up a central counterparty service to allow transactions on Italian government bonds to be executed on MTS SpA, an electronic trading platform in Italy. The transactions would be executed anonymously and guaranteed by the service.