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Jeff Maillet and his four-person team have joined FrontPoint Partners after departing Nuveen Investments last month, and are preparing to launch a distressed debt fund. Eileen Rives, Gregory Bunk, Lisa Mincheski and Steven Hill, have joined the Greenwich, Conn.-based firm, which has plans down the road for collateralized debt obligations and a slew of loan investment strategies. Philip Duff, the former ceo of Van Kampen Investments and now partner and chairman at FrontPoint, said the new fund will be a "classic distressed debt product" with three parts: distressed workout situations, value investing, and an intra-capital structure using arbitrage. Calls to Maillet were referred to a public relations agency for FrontPoint and were not returned.

Cone Mills Corporation, a denim fabric producer based in Greensboro, N.C., was able to extend its credit facility by downsizing the deal and accepting a new structure pitched by lead bank Bank of America.Scott Wenhold, v.p. and treasurer, said the company's new $68 million facility will replace its existing $73 million facility. "The structuring of the facility is quite different and it benefits both of us. Banks want to reduce credit exposure to the company and from our standpoint things won't get better until we pay down debt and restructure our balance sheet," said Wenhold.

Global Crossing's bank debt reportedly traded up three points to 45 last week following an announcement that the company is selling a business unit for $160 million. The company is selling its IPC unit to an investment group led by Goldman Sachs. "It's considered a slight positive to flat," commented a dealer. "It depends on the cash flow you're taking away. Even if you bring in a certain amount of cash, you must allocate it to pay down debt. At the end of the day your net equation is how much cash flow you're taking away vs. how much you're reducing your debt." Calls to Dan Cohrs, cfo, were referred to the company's media relations office. A spokesman did not return calls by press time.

Despite a flurry of good news that has lifted European telco credits, analysts are still warning investors to proceed with caution. In the past weeks, Colt received an equity injection from Fidelity, Jazztel has begun to restructure its balance sheet and KPN, as well as Sonera, have begun to focus on debt reduction. Last week, Sonera's 5.625% notes of '05 tightened roughly 70 basis points to 250 basis points over five-year swaps and KPN's 7.25% notes of '06 have come in almost 300 basis points in the past month to about 500 basis points over five-year swaps. "The recent rally is far from being a long-term uptick," warns a London-based industry analyst.

ABN Amro is working on a Euro12.5 billion ($10.98 billion) balance sheet collateralized loan obligation to remove its exposure to large corporate leveraged loans from a variety of sectors, including those it has made to U.S.-based companies and other companies worldwide. "We're in the embryonic stages of the deal," said a portfolio manager with the firm. He declined to comment more specifically on the deal's collateral, investor profiles, or the price talk expected to surface on the notes backing the structure.

Macquarie Corporate Finance USA, a New York-based division of Australia's Macquarie Bank, is seeking to acquire several U.S. electric transmission grids and will securitize these assets to finance the acquisitions. Tom Capasse, division director in the New York unit, declined to specify what companies will be acquired. Steve Fetter, the head of Fitch's global power group, says the purchase of transmission grid assets through securitization has never been done before.

Market sources say $600 million in commitments has come in on BNP Paribas' credit for Zurich Capital Markets, including $200 commitments from Lloyds and Deutsche Bank, after the firm offered richer up-front fees this time around. Bankers said BNP Paribas has doubled the up-front fees it offered last year when it pitched the company's one-year commercial paper backstop to banks. The bank is offering three basis points for commitments up to $200 million, two basis points for commitments up to $100 million, and one basis point for commitments up to $50 million on the new credit. Pricing on the investment grade credit is similar to the last deal at LIBOR plus 22.5 basis points.

BNP Paribas has wrapped up its $150 million revolver for Smart & Final after the company required an extension on the old facilities while it waited on documentation for the replacement. The deal was launched on Oct. 22 in Los Angeles and was completed last week, said a banker familiar with the credit. The new revolver replaces a $150 million, three-year credit led by Credit Lyonnais and NationsBank.

The £2 billion sale lease back deal of 6,700 properties owned by British Telecommunications, which has been delayed since September, will kick off next week with a roadshow, according to an official at Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, which is underwriting the deal. The deal, dubbed Telereal, should be one of the largest deals out of the U.K. this year. It had been delayed because of the massive amount of legal work involved in securitizing so many properties. British land property firms Land Securities Trillium and William Pears, will fund roughly £1.8 billion of the purchase with an offering of asset-backed bonds. The final structure of the deal has not been set and the offering circular is scheduled to appear this week. The SSSB official said the deal will have tranches ranging from triple-A to triple-B, but couldn't comment on price talk.

Busysiders looking at the "B" tranche of UBS Warburg's $190 million bank deal backing Investcorp's acquisition of Neptune Technology Group from Schlumberger last week said they are expecting a price flex on the deal. Investors compared the deal to the recently twice oversubscribed J.P. Morgan deal for Compass Minerals, which offered investors a $225 million term loan "B" at a spread of LIBOR plus 3 1/2% as part of a structure including a $250 million bond deal. "This is an all-senior deal offering the same spread as Compass," lamented one buysider who passed on the deal. She explained the credit was a roughly 4X all-senior deal, leaving investors uncomfortable without any subordinated cushion. "The leverage is just way too high and the deal too small," she added.

Wachovia Securities and UBS Warburg are delaying the launch of a credit on behalf of US Oncology, a cancer research concern, until mid-December. The deal was supposed to hit the market this month, but has been postponed due to the holidays, said Bruce Broussard, cfo of US Oncology. "We felt with the holidays and outstanding structural requirements we needed to get done we would move it until after the holidays," he said. As it is structured now, the deal consists of a $100 million revolver and a $75 million asset-sale bridge facility. Wachovia and UBS Warburg are also supposed to lead a follow-on bond deal sometime next year. The size of the bond deal could not be determined by press time. Broussard did not return repeated calls further inquiring about possible structural changes to the deal. Price talk on the deal was unavailable, but sources noted that leverage on the deal is supposed to be less than two times.

PTT, Thailand's largest oil firm, has raised $726m in its forthcoming IPO on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, giving a boost to prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's ambitious plans for a slew of government sell-offs in coming years to help fund the budget deficit and reinvigorate the country's stock market. In total 920m shares were sold at Bt35 each, the top end of the Bt30-Bt35 price range. The transaction secured a total of Bt32.2bn, making the deal the second largest IPO in non-Japan Asia this year.