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Reuters is to launch an internet trading site for CP and it announced yesterday the appointment of Jim Perrello, formerly a CP trader at Goldman Sachs, as chief executive officer of the project. The site, called Reuters Liquid Markets, will offer a platform for trading CP, CD and other money market bonds. No date has been set for the launch, but a spokesperson at Reuters expects the launch towards the end of this year. John Ford, Euro-CP product manager at Deutsche Bank, and chairman of the Euro-CP Association, says: "Investors are keen to see information in the easiest possible format so this will definitely help, and they are increasingly prepared to transact over the internet." Issuers, investors and dealers will be able to use the site for information and to transact online. Three other sites offer a CP transaction service: Prescient Markets' cpmarket.com, TradeWeb and Bloomberg. But Perrello says: "We are slightly different in that we will offer a complete solution - the market constituents need information, tools and analytics to allow them to communicate more effectively. So our approach is to service all these aspects as well as transactions." Ford, at Deutsche Bank says: "These platforms could put a question mark over the future role of sales people, but even if the whole market moved to electronic trading you would still need someone to sell the platform and give advice to the investors." Perrello adds: "The site needs to have the backing of the dealer community and it is not a disintermediating platform. It will give people more time to think and develop relationships. I know the dealer community has received it very well." Reuters cannot confirm which dealers have committed to the site. It has not disclosed details of how the product will charge its clients, but it is thought that it will be by subscription. Ford comments: "The challenge is that the system has to be easier than picking up the phone."

Republic of Columbia's third note of the year is a euro300 million ($262.83 million) trade that pays a final coupon of 11.5%. It goes out to May 2011. Its other two notes this year have been for euro200 million and euro400 million. The currency makes up almost 50% of Republic of Columbia's issuance to date.

Rheinische Hypothekenbank (Rheinhyp) has closed a three-year £

Romania has ended weeks of nervous anticipation by mandating Credit Suisse First Boston and JP Morgan as the joint leads for a Eu300m-Eu500m seven year Eurobond. "There were no particular problems holding up our decision," Daniela Cernat, Romanian secretary of state for public finance, told EuroWeek. "We are in no hurry for funds, and we wanted first to see some concrete results to show investors our budget and multilateral borrowing."

Romania has ended weeks of nervous anticipation by mandating Credit Suisse First Boston and JP Morgan as the joint leads for a Eu300m-Eu500m seven year Eurobond. "There were no particular problems holding up our decision," Daniela Cernat, Romanian secretary of state for public finance, told EuroWeek. "We are in no hurry for funds, and we wanted first to see some concrete results to show investors our budget and multilateral borrowing."

Merrill Lynch and Commerzbank yesterday morning (Thursday) took advantage of improving market sentiment as they completed a Eu316.5m accelerated bookbuild of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, the world's leading printing machine manufacturer. The 5.275m shares were priced aggressively at Eu60. This gave no discount to the closing bid price of Heidelberger the day before. The issue, according to a banker close to the deal, was covered in two hours. The stock at the close of trading yesterday was up to Eu61.

UK food retailer Safeway reported positive full year results this week to continue its turnaround after an extremely difficult 2000. While sales growth was sustained at 5.2%, operating margins were up from 4.1% to 4.9% in 2000, and operating profits before exceptionals rose by 25% to £395m. A debt reduction of 9% helped Safeway cut net debt-to-Ebitda to 1.9 times from 2.4 times, while Ebitda interest cover climbed from 7 times to 7.5 times.

Mandated arrangers Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Industrial Bank of Japan have launched the Eu470m and $165m seven year loan backing Sasol's Eu1.3bn acquisition of Condea. The deal, which is fully underwritten by the mandated lead arrangers, consists of two term loans of Eu320m and $165m, a Eu126m revolver and a Eu24m LOC facility.

Denmark Bayerische Landesbank has launched the Eu50m five year term loan for Roskilde Bank to general syndication.

* SNS bank Nederland NV Rating: A2/A/A+

SNS Bank Nederland has issued a HK$100 million ($12.82 million) two-year trade via SG. The trade is plain vanilla, linked to floating euribor and it pays a final coupon of 4.92%.

The Republic of South Africa is set to make a second big stride towards its target of $1bn of funds for the fiscal year, by mandating Nomura and Daiwa for a probable ¥30bn ($243m) six year Samurai bond. South Africa has only issued twice before on the Samurai market; a ¥30bn five year bond in 1995, and a ¥40bn seven year in 1997, via Daiwa. This time Daiwa has teamed up with Nomura, to the exclusion of the two US houses also shortlisted for the bond - JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch.