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Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW), the internet company that is not yet one year old, is raising a syndicated loan of $12bn, in a dramatic indication of the rapid shifting of power in the global telecoms industry.

Dresdner Kleinwort Benson has hired Richard Etheridge from Greenwich NatWest to work on the leveraged financing team for LBOs and MBOs. He will report directly to Ed Robinson, the head of the London loans desk. Dresdner is looking to hire further staff and will shortly announce another new member of the loans team.

INVESTORS can breath a sigh of relief today (Friday) following pricing of that rare animal in the European high yield market - an offering from a non-telecoms issuer. The company in question, Ifco, is a Dutch-based producer of returnable plastic containers aimed at supermarket chains, which is raising Eu180m-Eu200m of 10 year funds to finance its entry into the US market.

After canvassing investor opinion on two continents and deliberating extensively, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) issued a three tranche perpetual preferred issue last week. It issued a $500m 8.817% tranche callable in 2005, a $1bn 9.118% tranche callable in 2010 and a Eu750m 7.77% tranche callable in 2005.

PowerGen, the UK energy utility, is the latest borrower to come to the loan market for a jumbo acquisition financing. It has awarded a mandate to Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (books), HSBC (agent), JP Morgan and Warburg Dillon Read (books) to arrange a $4bn loan in support of its $5.4bn acquisition of LG&E Energy Corp, a US energy group. The five banks have level status, and have split the underwriting between them equally. PowerGen is to pay $3.2bn cash, a 58% premium to the share price when the markets closed last Friday. It will also assume $2.2bn of debt from the target.

ROYAL BANK of Scotland's long awaited £1.4bn equivalent three tranche tier 1 capital offering lived up to expectations this week when, at the time of pricing yesterday (Thursday), the issue was 2-1/2 times oversubscribed. Launched to support the Scottish bank's recent takeover of UK clearing bank NatWest, the deal is the largest ever tier 1 financing.

Finland Look out for news on a mandate for a facility for Finnish energy group Fortum. Among the banks thought to be close to the deal are Citibank, MeritaNordbanken and Svenska Handelsbanken.

SMALLER INTERNET offers also drove investors into a frenzy this week with StepStone pricing, a price range announced for Lastminute.com and Lycos Europe and LibertySurf set to launch next week. While attention may be on jumbo offers from World Online and T Online, deals such as StepStone's Nkr1.728bn issue drew strong interest, with the recruitment service achieving a 30 times oversubscription despite pricing at the top of the revised range. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter was the bookrunner.

* Deutsche Bank - DB Ireland plc Rating: AA

Europe's cities and regions are drifting into international markets, rather than rushing, as Euan Hagger finds out. But some are blazing the way in attracting international interest A Eu1bn benchmark which the German federal state, Sachsen-Anhalt, plans to raise by the end of March will cap a busy quarter for bond issuance by fellow Länder. As such, the transaction has special relevance, since Sachsen-Anhalt's borrowing strategy in the public bond markets has been driven by the notion that the dominance of Schuldscheine - semi-tradable instruments which German mortgage banks (Hypothekenbanks) lend to German federal states as collateral for part of their bond issuance (Pfandbriefe) - is under threat.

* Bank Austria AG Guarantor: City of Vienna