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Japan AFLAC launched its second outstanding Samurai bond issue this week, increasing the intended ¥35bn five year deal to ¥40bn after receiving strong investor demand. Goldman Sachs and Nikko Salomon Smith Barney joint lead managed the AAA rated bond issue, which provides a coupon of 0.87% and was priced to yield 35bp over yen Libor.

NIB Capital Bank has issued its 41st yen note of 2001: a ¥1 billion ($8.08 million) that pays 2% semi-annually. Yen accounts for nearly 50% of the issuer's funding volume, bu it hasl also used euro, Swiss franc and Norwegian krone this year.

Spreads on Philips Electronics' seven and 10 year paper widened sharply this week after CFO Jan Hommen warned of an industry-wide slump in the semiconductor market. Speaking at a conference in Barcelona, Hommen said: "Recent semiconductor industry statistics show that the slump is deepening further. Of course, Philips is being impacted by this trend and by the lower demand for products in mobile displays and optical storage where we have very strong market positions."

* Toyota Motor Credit Corp Rating: Aa1/AAA

Dollars EuroHypo Luxembourg will launch its $1bn five year lettres de gages publiques issue in the near future. Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and UBS Warburg are joint leads, with ABN Amro, Barclays Capital, Commerzbank and Morgan Stanley as co-leads. The issue will be rated AAA by Standard & Poor's. (29/05)

This week was dominated by holidays - Ascension Day in Europe and long weekends ahead in the UK and US - bringing activity to a near standstill yesterday (Thursday). Profit-taking throughout the week drove spreads wider, with telecoms and auto yields worst hit. Ford Motor Credit's debt widened following the decision to replace 13m Firestone tyres at a cost of $3bn. Moody's changed the outlook on its A2 rating from stable to negative and a similar action was taken by Fitch. Ford's dollar and euro issues widened by as much as 10bp on the news.

Rheinhyp Bank Europe has closed a $100 million two-year trade via Morgan Stanley, to be issued on May 25. The coupon pays 6m US dollar libor -32bp set in arrears. Rheinhyp Bank Europe has been a regular issuer this year, with trades in yen, euro and dollar. It has kept close to the short end of the maturity curve. This two-year trade is its longest-dated trade this year.

Rio Tinto Finance has concluded a one-year £

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has taken three bankers from Scotia Capital in London and a team of Italian bankers to develop its leveraged finance activity in Italy. In London, Jeff Thomas joins as a director in the leveraged finance team. Peter Crawford, an associate director, and David Vials, a manager, also come from Scotia.

Finland Sampo, the Finnish insurance company has triggered a bidding war with its Nkr20.8bn (Eu2.6bn) offer for Storebrand, Norway's largest insurance group. The bid follows a Nkr17.5bn informal bid from Den norske Bank that went through at the close of trading on Monday 21.

Several sales of corporate divisions in the German market have been attracting attention this week as the Degussa Dental division went to a trade buyer and two auctions, for ContiTech and Mannesmann Plastic Machinery, moved one step nearer to close. And the final round of bids for the sale of Henkel's chemicals unit, Cognis, will close on June 5. At the last count equity houses in the bidding group were down to the final few. Market sources suggest that those left are KKR, Schroders and Bain Capital. The resulting buy-out could total as much as Eu3bn-Eu3.5bn.

SK Corp and Citic Pacific launched international bond issues this week to buoyant investor demand. Korea-based SK Corp's $250m senior unsecured Eurobond issue ended up three times oversubscribed and subsequently tightened 15bp in secondary markets.