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More insurance companies are looking with interest at loans as an investment class and chipping in to commingled funds. Bankers and fund managers have long been pitching to insurers the virtues of loans' senior status and floating-rate component, and some of the biggest and earliest institutional players in the market were insurance companies. But increasingly, smaller insurers are jumping in, an investment consultant to insurance companies told Insurance Finance & Investment, an LMW sister publication. He noted the product had previously suffered a lack of awareness among smaller insurers, but it was now stepping out into the light.

Deutsche Bank has boosted its credit derivatives effort with hires in trading and structuring. Aelisa Kim Cipriani, director in the CDO team at Morgan Stanley in London, started Monday as a director in collateralized debt obligation structuring, according to Jeffrey D'Suza, head of European collateralized debt obligation business in London. This is a new position, he said, adding the department is growing in response to increased demand for structured products. Deutsche Bank also transferred Michael Furtado, a lawyer in the firmÕs legal department, to the CDO team. Furtado said he will focus on the execution and structuring of CDOs.

Hong Kong Citic Pacific's global bond issue was increased from $350m to $450m last Friday. The transaction was over twice oversubscribed at launch. The Baa2/BBB- rated deal carries a 7.625% coupon. HSBC and Merrill Lynch were joint lead managers.

Enron Corp, the US energy company, helped expand the credit spectrum in the Samurai bond market this week, when it became the first triple-B rated US corporate to launch a deal for a tenor of over one year. Merrill Lynch sole lead managed the dual tranche bond issue for the Baa1/BBB+ rated company, following a roadshow in Japan two weeks ago. Mizuho Securities and Tokyo-Mitsubishi Securities were co-managers.

Australia Australian Magnesium launched premarketing for its IPO on Tuesday. Arrangers ABN Amro, JB Were and Merrill Lynch are selling A$680m of new shares as part of a funding package for its Stanwell light metals project in central Queensland. Including the debt facilities, the total funding is likely to be in the region of A$1.7bn.

Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), Singapore's largest shipping company, is seeking to raise up to $132m from the New York Stock Exchange IPO of its chartering unit, American Eagle Tankers. NOL will also sell Singapore Depositary Receipts (SDRs), which will be listed in Singapore, to international investors. Salomon Smith Barney is lead manager for the transaction. Salomon has a long relationship with NOL and handled the 1999 equity issue that signalled the return to profitability for the Singapore-based international shipping group. ABN Amro and Morgan Stanley are co-leads. DBS Group Holdings and ING Barings are also involved.

Roadshow Holdings, the multi-media advertising arm of Kowloon Motor Bus, launched the roadshow for its Hong Kong IPO this week. The transaction, which Crédit Lyonnais Securities Asia is handling, will close when the company lists on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in London on June 28. The issue will raise up to HK$530m. Indosuez WI Carr Securities, Kim Eng Holdings, and KGI Asia are also working on the sale. Roadshow provides multi-media on-board broadcasting and advertising services through liquid crystal display screens on buses operated by parent Kowloon Motor Bus. Roadshow wants to extend its services to other transport such as green mini-buses.

Norway-based Kommunalbanken and Stockland Property Management accessed the Australian market this week against a background of subdued trading. The Aaa/AAA rated Norwegian local government funding agency launched its Kangaroo issue on Wednesday, marking its debut into the Australian bond market.

Members' Equity Pty Ltd, the Australian non-bank mortgage lender, this week launched its second offshore securitisation in the 144A market. Lead manager Credit Suisse First Boston employed neither of the structures that are now in vogue for international Australian MBS - the single tranche amortiser or a multi-tranche deal with a short piece targeted at US money market funds.

Merrill Lynch put in a winning bid for the disposal of 14m American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) by Taiwan's National Development Fund (NDF). The $291.2m deal took barely an hour to sell in the early hours of Wednesday morning New York time, despite the miserly 0.86% discount to the Tuesday closing price for the ADRs. This is the first time any investment bank other than Goldman Sachs has won TSMC related business since the company's New York listing in 1997. Merrill Lynch declined to comment on the price at which it won the block from the vendor, which generally sells a chunk of TSMC stock each year. Some 10 banks were invited to bid and Merrill Lynch emerged victorious and immediately went into the market and sold at $20.80 per ADR.

CIBC World Markets has set up a note purchase facility, which allows one of its asset-backed CP conduits to issue CP for the other. The conduits, Great Lakes Funding (Great Lakes) and Superior Funding (Superior), will remain intact, but Superior will now issue CP on behalf of Great Lakes, up to a limit of $5 billion. Kevin Ballinger, director, conduit management at CIBC, says: "We kicked off a new funding strategy last September to increase our presence in the Euro-CP market. As part of the strategy we added Deutsche Bank as a second ECP dealer (in addition to Goldman Sachs) for Superior. Since then Superior has been a regular issuer in the market." But he adds: "Superior is certainly not moving away from the US market. Previously we viewed the Euro CP market opportunistically, but Superior now aims to raise up to 40% of its outstandings in Euro-CP."

Cameroon Mandated arrangers Citibank/ Schroder Salomon Smith Barney and Standard Bank have launched the Eu95m term loan for MTN Cameroon to a select group of banks.