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Schroder Salomon Smith Barney kicked off premarketing for a Eu230m secondary offering for Germany's leading household metering company yesterday (Thursday). Techem provides reading, allocation and billing of heating costs, and has a market share in Germany of 26%. Its nearest competitor has 23%. The company was listed in March 2000 on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at Eu19 and is trading around Eu28. The stock closed at Eu28.2 yesterday, up 1.26%.

Colombia will sell $1.3bn of bonds backed by the World Bank in a bid to avoid the bigger costs of accessing the dollar markets with plain vanilla bonds. The country's finance minister, Juan Manuel Santos, announced yesterday (Thursday) that the republic had mandated JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to manage the sale, the structure of which will be similar to the rolling interest World Bank guarantee bond Argentina did in 1999.

Cassa di Risparmio di Genova (Carige) issued £

Ford Motor Credit Co was deluged with more than $25bn of orders yesterday (Thursday) for its $8.2bn euro and dollar global bond as investors continued their high grade corporate bond buying frenzy. The issue, increased by $3.2bn, led a barrage of deals during the week as it became clear that a wave of cash was engulfing the corporate bond market. "There is a frenzy in the market to buy corporate bonds," said Drew Ertman, a principal at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, which led the Ford (FMCC) deal with Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

Countrywide has increased the debt ceiling off its $4 billion Euro-MTN programme to $5 billion. The US issuer signed the facility in 1998 and has issued over $2 billion-worth of debt off 18 trades. The arranger is Lehman Brothers.

Linde has started its funding for 2001 with a one-year euro17 million ($15.93 million) fixed-rate trade which pays 4.65%, and a syndicated Z200 million ($48.6 million) deal that goes out to February 2006 and pays 12.375%. Deutsche Bank was bookrunner off the euro trade and HypoVereinsbank lead managed the zloty note. Stefan Hess, group financier at Linde, admits he is concerned about the way spreads are continuing to widen. He says: "We've seen no effect on spreads at the short-end, but with longer maturities, especially with so much corporate paper outstanding in the market, it can be quite difficult issuing MTN tranches."

This week the loan market absorbed the news that the fourth candidate in the French UMTS beauty contest, Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, has pulled out of the auction and that Bouyges Telecom is reconsidering its place in the bidding. Many bankers see the move as final confirmation that UMTS licences fees are too high for the current market.

Argentina * Province of Buenos Aires

* After 228 years of male dominance, the London Stock Exchange announced this week that its next leader will be a woman. Clara Furse, a Dutch former managing director at UBS Warburg, will take up the role of chief executive on February 5. Furse will step into the breach vacated by Gavin Casey, who resigned after the LSE's merger with the Deutsche Börse fell through. She had been at UBS Warburg between 1983 and 1998. Since then, she has been deputy chairman of London International Financial Futures Exchange and group chief executive at Crédit Lyonnais Rouse.

Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, this week revealed details of its first securitisation — a $300m catastrophe bond placed privately at the end of December.

Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company, this week revealed details of its first securitisation — a $300m catastrophe bond placed privately at the end of December.