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Cash rich investors in Europe looking for convergence plays were relieved on Monday as Croatia got away its Eu500m seven year bond via Credit Suisse First Boston and Deutsche Bank.

* Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale Rating: Aa1/AAA (Moody's/Fitch)

DePfa Bank and DePfa Finance have been dropped as issuers from Deutsche Pfandbriefbank's euro25 billion ($21.54 billion) facility for the issuance of debt instruments.

* Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau Guarantor: Federal Republic of Germany

DePfa and HVB Real Estate this week embarked on their quests to distance themselves from the opportunism of the jumbo Pfandbrief market, DePfa launching a Eu3bn global and HVB detailing its plans for a Eu2bn minimum global next week. But by going head to head in the five year sector, the two may find their ambitions stymied. After DePfa had last Friday announced that the first deal off its new global issuance programme would be in five years, HVB on Monday said that it would also tap that maturity.

Deutsche Bank, besides reporting its results under US GAAP for the first time (net income in 2001 was Eu1.8bn, compared to Eu5.1bn in 2000) has reorganised its management to create what it calls a "virtual holding structure", at the centre of which is a new 12 strong executive committee. Under the realignment, the Vorstand group board has been reduced in number, with Jürgen Fitschen and Michael Philipp being released from their Vorstand duties at their own request. They each continue with their roles in their existing group divisions, corporate and investment bank (CIB) and private clients and asset management (PCAM) respectively. Fitschen is responsible for transaction banking and relationship management Germany, and Philipp heads asset management and wealth management services. However, they have also been appointed as global business heads with seats on the newly created group executive committee.

US dollar swap spreads traded in a tight range all week, largely in response to developments in the Treasury and stock markets. By yesterday (Thursday) afternoon swap spreads were a touch wider than a week earlier. The five year mid-market was around 67bp and the 10 year 71.5bp. The two year moved most as it edged out to 39.5bp over the new 3% Treasury due January 2004. This was some 6bp wider than last week, when swap spreads had crunched lower to take account of the 9bp roll into the new note.

Croatia A debut $15m pre-export financing for Brodosplit Brodogradiliste, the ship builder, has been launched into syndication by mandated arranger Standard Bank London.

Competition for the mandate to arrange $1.2bn worth of bond issues over the next two years for El Salvador will reach fever pitch next week when the five banks shortlisted by the sovereign will make verbal presentations. The five shortlisted banks are understood to be Deutsche Bank, CSFB, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Citigroup/Salomon Smith Barney, all of which submitted their proposals this week.

Brazil * Petrobras International Finance

Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg (EnBW), one of Germany's largest utilities, signed its euro3 billion ($2.59 billion) Euro-MTN programme this week under the issuer name EnBW International Finance. Barclays Capital is the arranger. They are joined on the dealer panel by BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, HSBC-CCF, JPMorgan, LBBW, Morgan Stanley and UBS Warburg. The shelf has been due to sign for a while, but the issuer chose to wait until it had received confirmed programme ratings from the rating agencies. Moody's has assigned it an A2 rating and Standard & Poor's gives it a rating of A+. Ingo Voigt, head of capital markets at EnBW, explains the reasoning behind the signing of the facility. He says: "We are a first time issuer in the debt capital markets. We had to decide whether to trade a straight one-off bond or sign an issuance programme. For us, the programme was the best option, as it will give us much more flexibility and efficiency. Why do the work many times when you can just do it once?" The benchmark trade is to be issued in February via Barclays Capital and Deutsche Bank. It will be denominated in euro but the final size of the trade has yet to be decided. The first funds will be used to finance the acquisition of neighbouring German utility, NWS. Voigt told MTNWeek that EnBW has no set targets for issuance in 2002 and is happy to wait and see how the first issue is received by the market. EnBW was formed in 1997 through the merger of two regional utilities.

English & Scottish Investors investment trust was forced to regroup this week after Caledonia Investments, the largest single shareholder, decided to sell out of the trust. But the motivation behind Caledonia's move is not clear. Despite assertions from Caledonia's chairman Sir Peter Buckley that the move was not the result of pressure applied by Caledonia's shareholders or the poor performance of English & Scottish, one analyst was not convinced.