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Banc of America Securities will be talking to investors this week preparing the groundwork for the $275 million credit backing Accredo Health's $415 million purchase of the specialty pharmaceutical division of Gentiva Health Services. Buysiders believe the paper will be very desirable, as it falls into a hot sector. In addition to the sector being highly attractive, slow new issuance has left investors scrambling for allocations on certain choice deals this year.

Citigroup's project finance team is attempting to organize key project finance lenders into pooling portfolio data to present to the Basel Committee this month to prove to the Swiss-based body that project loans have significantly higher recovery rates than those on corporate loans. "The accords may be five years away, but the earlier you start, the more of a jump you have on the situation," said one project finance banker, noting, "clients and banks should be worried. If they [The Models Task Force] rate the project finance loans as junk, the pricing will go through the roof," he added.

Crédit Agricole Indosuez (CAI) is making a major push into the European fixed-income market aimed at increasing its presence in the corporate, government and asset-backed credit markets as well as becoming a key credit derivatives player. "We don't want to be a bulge bracket firm, but a major player in terms of credit, complex credit derivatives and risk management," Thierry Sciard, global head of fixed-income in Paris, told BW.

Deutsche Bank released its two veteran co-heads of U.S. fixed-income credit research, Paul Tice and Mark Girolamo, late Wednesday. David Folkerts-Landau, Deutsche Bank's London-based global head of markets research, said "[Tice and Girolamo] are very nice guys, and they worked hard here, but we terminated them because we need truly strong leaders in all facets of research management, and they just didn't fit the bill."

Toronto-based Aber Diamond secured a $230 million loan to fund capital commitments for the Diavik Diamonds Project, the largest ever dedicated project finance facility for a diamond project. Aber tapped Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Deutsche Bank, Export Development Canada and Royal Bank of Canada, said Caroline Glasbey, director for investor relations. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi subsequently joined the lead bank group underwriting the loan, which syndicated the facility to another eight players.

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein is looking to add structurers and marketers to its London-based European asset-backed securitization team. The firm is especially interested in hiring French, Spanish and Portuguese structurers to increase its presence in those markets, according to a DrKW ABS official. The firm plans to focus on

FTN Financial Capital Markets, formerly known as First Tennessee Capital Markets, has hired Charles Smart and Dhiren Toolsidas from Sandler O'Neill as senior v.p.s in its newly created quantitative research and structuring group. The two are part of what fixed-income trading chief Deke Iglehart calls "FTN's answer to our growing mortgage-backed trading and research needs." Smart and Toolsidas are based in the Memphis, Tenn.-based firm's New York office.

Fitch Ratings is launching a rating system for collateralized debt obligation managers, following a similar initiative launched at the end of last year by Standard & Poor's to better respond to increasing demand by investors for information regarding managers on specific transactions.

Approximately $30 million of Global Crossing's bank debt changed hands last week as levels slid from the low 40's to 23-26, with distressed players stepping up following the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last Monday. The picture brightened somewhat on speculation that $360 million in cash, received in December from the sale of the company'sIPC Trading Systems units to an investment group led by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, is sitting in an escrow account waiting to be distributed to creditors. A spokeswoman from Global Crossing could not confirm the possibility of an escrow account or a debtor-in-possession credit in the mix.

HSBC Securities has hired Shawn Burke, a utility and pipelines analyst at Greenwich Capital Markets, in the new position of senior v.p. and investment-grade utilities and pipelines analyst in New York. Robert Smalley, investment-grade research head at HSBC, says Burke was hired because the recent volatility in the pipeline sector has created investment opportunities. "He's one of the top analysts in the market, so hopefully he can help us develop that business," says Smalley. Burke says he joined HSBC because he wanted to return to the sell-side. Prior to joining Greenwich Capital Markets, he was head of investment-grade research at Barclays Capital.

Lehman Brothers is reshopping an overhauled credit for TSI Telecommunications Services with new pricing and a combined term "A" and "B" loan, after a tough reception by investors. The $100 million senior secured term loan "A" and $200 million term loan "B" will be priced at LIBOR plus 4 1/2 %-- a 1% hike on the original spread. The spread on the $35 million revolver has also been raised to 4 1/2 % said a banker. A $245 million bond offering has been completed, but pricing could not be ascertained, added the banker. Call protection was added in at 102/101 during the first tweaking last month, a rework that also included a price flexing (LMW, 1/21). Lehman bankers did not return repeated calls.

Deutsche Bank's $70 million deal for tabletop sweetener-company Merisant blew out last week only days after launching. The add-on credit for Merisant, whose products include Equal and Canderel, was launched last Tuesday, said an official familiar with the situation. "This is a credit people knew with strong brand names," he said. Pricing is still at LIBOR plus 3 1/4 % for the five-year term loan "B" and had not been flexed prior to press time. The new financing is aimed at paying down higher intereset subordinated debt incurred in the leveraged buyout by Pegasus Capital Advisors in March 2000. The business was purchased by Pegasus from Monsanto, which had decided to concentrate on its pharmaceutical and agricultural products business.