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THE UK Treasury, which oversees the private finance initiative (PFI), used the programme itself two weeks ago, as UBS Warburg placed £127.79m of bonds to finance the renovation of the ministry's headquarters in central London. The transaction was launched without much publicity as the Treasury was keen to control press coverage itself, but details of the deal have now emerged.

Greenwich NatWest last Friday launched a £65.95m index linked securitisation to finance the construction of a new hospital in Neath, South Wales. The borrower, Baglan Moor Healthcare Ltd, has a contract from Brow Morgannwg NHS Trust to build a new 270 bed hospital,the Neath/Port Talbot Local General Hospital. Baglan Moor will then provide all non-clinical services to the hospital until the expiry of the contract in 2029.

UBS priced its latest leveraged, synthetic CLO last Friday, transferring credit risk on $1.2bn of assets in its principal finance book. North Street Referenced Linked Notes 2000-1 Ltd's $184m of notes are believed to have sold well at spreads comparable with high yield CBOs.

Convertible bonds (CBs) can be awkward beasts. In this Learning Curve we will wrestle with a question that has been controversial, namely--what discount rate should be used in valuing CBs?

A SPATE of large equity issues will emerge from Australia in the next three months, culminating in the jumbo Vodafone Pacific flotation in late June and the NRMA insurance division IPO in July. US telecoms firm RSL Communications is braving the volatile global stock market conditions to sell its entire stake in ComVergent Telecommunications, while the takeover of Colonial Group by Commonwealth Bank of Australia should spawn a global placement of up to A$1bn of CBA shares.

CREDIT Suisse First Boston won the sought after mandate this week for a bond issue from Korea Exchange Bank (KEB), the latest in the line of subordinated deals for Korean banks. Korea Exchange Bank plans a $200m issue in early June, its first major fixed income transaction since the 1997 Asian crisis and its first financing attempt since it had to abandon an equity offering in November 1999 that was due to be led by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.

TWELVE bank teams have lodged bids for lead manager roles on a $150m 10-year bond issue from Power Finance Corp of India (PFCI). As one of few deals likely to emerge from India this year, and as a semi-sovereign entity, bidding was fierce and pricing is expected to be tight.

SINGAPORE this week received backing from the international fund management community and reconfirmed its position as a secure investment haven within Asia. Chartered Semiconductor secured at least $878m from the sale of new and secondary shares in a global share placement completed in less than two days. Singapore Airlines has obtained at least S$500m from a placement of shares in Singapore Airport Services (SATs) and SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC), both of which are soon to be listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

Dollar swap spreads widened sharply at the end of this week, leaving the 10 year spread around 10bp wider, as another torrid period in the equity markets on Wednesday and yesterday (Thursday) added to fears of a general meltdown in stocks. Yesterday, the 10 year swap traded out to 128.5bp over the 6.50% February 2010 Treasury before losing a little ground. The five year moved out to 91bp to 92bp over the 5.875% November 2004 note, and two year swaps were at 72bp over the 6.375% 2002 note.

Denmark Joint arrangers and bookrunners Commerzbank and LB Kiel will launch today (Friday) a Eu150m facility for SYDBank, Denmark's fifth largest bank. The deal is priced at 22bp over Euribor. Banks have been invited to join at three tickets: Eu15m for 8bp, Eu12m for 7bp and Eu8m for 5bp.

THE Region of Sicily signed a $1.7bn global MTN programme on Wednesday May 3. The programme is a multi-currency facility and the lead arrangers are Merrill Lynch and Banco di Sicilia. The region hopes to diversify its funding sources via the programme - Sicily has already issued five bonds in the capital markets, and taken out three loans.

Germany's corporates are finally realising that in order to raise successful bond issues they need the ratings agencies on their side. For years they have relied on local investors and internal ratings and relationships. But unrated issuers are finding it increasingly hard to attract investors's attention as more and more companies come to market with ratings in order to tap a hungry international investor base. Philip Moore reports. Christian Kolb, head of origination at HSBC Trinkaus in Dusseldorf, has a new and uncompromising rule when it comes to new issuance in the German corporate bond market: no rating, no public bond issue.