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The Republic of Bulgaria is to forge ahead with its debut Eurobond early next week. The transaction has been given a boost by a timely upgrade from Standard & Poor's (S&P) to BB- on Wednesday, parliamentary approval for the transaction yesterday (Thursday) and a successful roadshow in Athens, Milan and Frankfurt this week, which is due to close in London today (Friday).

Railtrack shareholders' hopes of winning compensation were dragged further into the political arena this week, as the UK transport secretary Stephen Byers came under fire for his role in the crisis. On Tuesday, Railtrack's chairman John Robinson clashed publicly with Byers when he demanded a public inquiry into the way the company was put into administration.

Caixa Geral de Depositos has signed a new euro5 billion ($4.49 billion) Euro-CP and Euro-CD facility. Citibank is the arranger. It replaces an old $250 million ECP and ECD shelf, which was arranged by JPMorgan. The new dealers are the arranger, Caixa Geral de Depositos, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.

South Africa Anglo American has completed its $2.25bn syndicated revolving facility. Some $3bn was raised from the market and despite increasing the loan by $25m, banks have been heavily scaled back from $200m to $150m and $100m to $75m.

Argentina's provincial governors yesterday (Thursday) rejected a plan to reduce their share of federal tax revenues, dashing hopes that any future international swap would include multilateral guarantees. The first leg of the country's debt restructuring - a planned swap of as much as $60bn of debt for below market rate loans open to everyone, but targeted at locals - has already been roundly rejected by international investors surveyed by Wall Street firms. Argentina's government never expected international investors to like the terms of the first phase of the swap.

Brunei Arrangers ABN Amro, BNP Paribas and HSBC are still working on the structure of the first ever syndicated loan for the Sultanate of Brunei. Prospective banks have been sounded out on a margin of 105bp over Libor for the $250m five year transaction. The deal will be launched next week.

Hong Kong * Jardine Strategic Finance Ltd

Europe * Rosy Blue Carat SA

Australia Westpac Banking Corp is arranging a A$135m one year term loan for National Foods. The borrower is involved in the milk and dairy foods industries and is Australia's largest publicly listed dairy firm.

Trading on credit-default swaps referenced to Enron and Dynegy dried up last Thursday as Dynegy appeared to be moving closer to acquiring a stake in its struggling rival, according to traders. Trading volumes on Enron, which just a few weeks ago was trading every day, was non-existent as the acquisition talks intensified, said traders in New York. "There's no flow at all. The only thing we're seeing is firms' unwinding previous trades," said one trader. Most of this business came from hedge funds that had previously bought protection. Another trader said "it's hard to offer protection on risk that's just hanging out there." Trading flows on Dynegy, which were already thin--averaging about one trade every three months--followed the same path as Enron.

J.P. Morgan has launched what it believes is the first high-yield credit-default swap index representing the five-year credit risk of a linear basket of 100 junk bond issuers, according to officials at the firm. "The main reason we did this is because until now, there have been no good alternatives to trade the market as a whole from the long and short side," said Angie Long, head of high-yield credit derivatives trading in New York. The product has been correlated to traditional high-yield bond indices and will allow clients to both invest and hedge their exposure to the U.S. high-yield market through the use of high-yield credit derivatives. The product is designed to cater to clients looking to allocate assets in high yield, Long said.