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Kvaerner, the Anglo-Norwegian engineering company battling to fight off bankruptcy, has managed to underwrite NKr500m of its NKr2bn (Eu250m) rights issue. The firm made the announcement on Wednesday, as it revealed that it was also in discussions with shareholders about arranging the rights issue as a three year convertible. The group avoided collapse over the weekend by reaching a deal with its lending banks, but needs to complete the equity deal to ensure its survival.

Two small secondary share offerings this week demonstrated that investors are starting to gain in confidence after New York's chaos. Schroder Salomon Smith Barney (SSSB) won a competitive bid to sell a Eu69.3m stake in Lagardère, the French holding company.

Leak's hunch that Rodolfo Diotallevi, who left Merrill Lynch's origination desk last week, would not be out of the market long has proved right. And it didn't take a genius to work out that he might be tempted to follow in the footsteps of his old chums Andrea Giordani and Pietro Sollecito, ex-Merrill origination men, who left the bank for Nomura last June. But poor Rudy is getting one of the shortest gardening leaves ever - barely nine days out of the office. He is due to start his new role at Nomura straight away and will be responsible for marketing facilities in debt capital markets for Spain and France and will cover MTN origination for Europe. Morgan Stanley's Frair Appleby-Walker has splashed out on a rather nice set of new wheels to cruise around London in. She's got herself a dark blue Audi TT and can be seen pushing the speed limits on country roads at the weekend. HSBC's Annemarie Ganatra has been getting into the performing arts. She has driven her fellow traders, Evie Christodoulidou and Fergus Kiely, mad with her singing for years. Now she has agreed to get professional voice training, and is also learning to dance. Rumour has it she wants to audition for the next series of Popstars...

A report from an analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein this week suggested that the net debt of troubled telecom equipment manufacturer Marconi exceeds the company's enterprise value. The report began: "Given the precarious state of its balance sheet, core operations and customer base, Marconi is unlikely to survive unless a major rescue package is provided by a strategic backer or a hostile buyer in the imminent future."

Italy has been at the centre of attention among European utilities in the loan market during 2001, sparking two jumbo financings to facilitate takeovers. The first of the Italian deals relates to the sell-off by Enel, Italy's state electricity monopoly, of its generation assets. Under the Bersani decree, which follows from the EU Electricity Directive, no one utility may import or produce more than 50% of Italy's power supply, and accordingly Enel must sell assets to reduce its dominant market share. Its three gencos earmarked for sale by the end of 2003 are: Elettrogen (5.4GW), Eurogen (7GW) and Italpower (2.6GW). Elettrogen was the first of Enel's assets to be sold off. A Spanish consortium led by Endesa along with BSCH (40%) and Italy's ASM Brescia (15%) beat off 27 companies in other consortia, in an auction for the generation plant. Most of the companies had credit secured by relationship banks backing their bids, including Endesa, which mandated Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein to arrange a Eu1.6bn loan facility to support the Eu2.63bn acquisition.

The City of Moscow is expected to kick off the roadshow for its Eu300m three year bond issue as early as next week - signalling Russia's long awaited return to the international capital markets. Lead managed by ING Barings and UBS Warburg, the deal heads a bulging pipeline of other Russian issuers keen to access the investment community - for the first time since the country spiralled into economic chaos in 1998.

ABN Amro has been dropped as a dealer from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation's $10 billion Euro-MTN programme.

UK mortgage bank Northern Rock this week launched a £1.5bn securitisation offered in dollars and sterling - the second it has launched this year from its master trust structure. Lead managed by Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, this was the deal the European market had been waiting for to test investor sentiment towards asset backed bonds.

* Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten NV Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA

Banc of America has hired Dik Blewitt, chief strategic officer at creditex in New York, as a managing director in its structured credit products group. Blewitt said he is structuring credit products for pension fund and insurance clients in the U.S. The appointment was a strategic hire by the firm rather than part of an expansion of the department. "It is a homerun in terms of opportunities," he quipped, referring to the firm's large balance sheet and global client base.

Steven Goldstein, president of TradeWeather.com, an on-line weather derivatives company, is among the thousands still unaccounted for following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York. Goldstein, who launched Tradeweather.com in 1999, moved into the North Tower of the WTC about three weeks ago. The move was part of Cantor Fitzgerald's acquisition of the company and incorporating the weather derivatives company into to the brokerÕs emissions trading group, according to a market official. Cantor occupied floors 101-105 in the North Tower. Officials at Cantor did not return calls.

AWG plc, which owns one of the nine regional water companies in England, announced last Friday that it no longer intends to demerge its regulated water assets from its operations. Instead, it will "restructure the group within AWG's overall corporate structure".