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Europe's first tracking stock for Alcatel's Optronics division had a troubled first week of trading on the Euronext Paris Premier Marché despite closing four times covered last Friday. The Eu1.4bn Morgan Stanley Dean Witter led deal suffered as technology related stocks took a further battering throughout the week following a disappointing earnings announcement from Nortel and negative news for Lucent - both comparable companies and potential customers for Alcatel Optronics.

Who snookered Craig Schiffer, the fun loving senior non-Japanese head of Nomura's capital markets division in Europe? You could have blown us over with Lady Windermere's fan when we heard the news. After the departure of Simon Fry, wasn't the straight talking Schiffer just the person to restore law and order?

Bank of America, Chase, SG and UBS Warburg are launching the largest acquisition financing to come from the non-telecoms sector in France this year. The deal is a $5bn facility for French insurance company AXA and will support the acquisition of the company's outstanding 40% of shares in US firm AXA Financial.

Australia Arrangers ANZ Investment Bank and Barclays Capital are preparing the launch of a fundraiser for Pacific Carriage/ Southern Cross Cables.

Deutsche Börse and a group of seven leading investment banks announced plans to launch real time euro and sterling investment grade bond indices this week, issuing a challenge to the US firms that have until now led the way in providing indices. The likes of Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Salomon Smith Barney have until now captured much of the European market, building on their experience in the US, which the euro sector is increasingly resembling.

Bear Stearns has increased the ceiling off its $1.5 billion Euro-CP programme to $2.5 billion. Bear Stearns self-arranged the programme in 1992.

Deutsche Börse and a group of seven leading investment banks announced plans to launch real time euro and sterling investment grade bond indices this week, issuing a challenge to the US firms that have until now led the way in providing indices. The likes of Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Salomon Smith Barney have until now captured much of the European market, building on their experience in the US, which the euro sector is increasingly resembling.

BNP Paribas took advantage of a better tone in the US corporate bond market this week to launch its first tier one offering as a combined entity. The $500m perpetual non-cumulative trust preferred issue was priced by lead managers BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs at 337.5bp over the 10 year Treasury and traded around its new issue price in the aftermarket. The deal was one of a number of successes in the US corporate bond market this week as high grade spreads began to show some stability, despite continued volatility in US equity markets.

Joint lead arrangers Bank of America (bookrunner) and Abbey National Treasury Services are preparing to launch the selldown of the £685m senior debt facilities for the Birmingham Northern Relief Road project which is being developed by special purpose vehicle (SPV) Midland Expressway Ltd. The deal is reckoned to be the largest Public Private Partnership (PPP) infrastructure project financed in the UK. The project involves the development of a 43km six lane motorway designed to relieve congestion on the M6 between junctions 4 and 11.