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Our compliments to Bear Stearns in London, which seems to have been given a whole new engine and not just a change of oil. Once upon a time the Bear in Europe was content to play in the children's paddling pool of the Euromarkets. In New York the Bear was a fiercesome competitor with one of the best returns on equity in Wall Street. Overseas, however, the firm made only the occasional small ripple and was best known for its pushy salesforce, which was paid solely on commission. Bear Stearns in Europe needed to improve its image, which was still distinctly Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens rather than Fifth Avenue. Now they are well on their way with the recruitment of our friend Michel Péretié the highly intelligent, former chief executive of BNP Paribas' debt capital markets business in London.

Barclays Capital has formed a new financial advisory group in the investment banking division. Mike Williams is leading the group as a managing director, and Mark Van De Voorde will join as a managing director in a few weeks. "Barclays was previously less well resourced to work on large scale capital restructuring," said Williams. "The new group will ensure we have the resources to do so in depth work with clients.

Six Spanish lenders, mostly regional savings banks, launched a Eu513.9m securitisation of mortgages this week through joint bookrunners Crédit Agricole Indosuez and EBN Banco. TDA-12 is the second MBS issue this year managed by Spanish securitisation management company Titulización de Activos (TdA).

Ireland's largest building society, EBS, launched its first securitisation this week with a Eu495m residential mortgage deal, Emerald Mortgages No 1 plc, lead managed by UBS Warburg. EBS Building Society is one of the top six mortgage lenders in Ireland, with a 14% market share. Jackie Gilroy, general manager of property finance at EBS in Dublin, said that owing to Ireland's rapidly growing housing market, the building society had been forced to seek new forms of funding.

Finaref, the consumer finance subsidiary of French retail group Pinault Printemps Redoute, made its first venture into the public debt market this week by securitising 46,000 unsecured consumer loans. Sole manager Crédit Lyonnais claimed that the Eu271.381m deal is the first public securitisation to use the French 'compartment' system, which allows for separate transactions to be issued through the same FCC (fonds commun de créances, the French securitisation vehicle).

French bank Natexis Banques Populaires launched its first securitisation this week to rid its balance sheet of the risk on a portfolio of mostly US investment grade corporate bonds. The synthetic CBO, Natix plc, references $412.5m of bonds on the bank's balance sheet, and involved the issue of Eu48.02m of notes and a super-senior credit default swap placed with an OECD bank. The deal was arranged by Natexis with Lehman Brothers and Natexis as joint bookrunners on the senior tranche. Lehman placed the junior notes.

* RBS Financial Markets has sold the last $800m of the $2bn 'A1' tranche of its Sabre Funding No 1 Ltd collateralised bond obligation. The $2.25bn deal, launched in November by Greenwich NatWest, parcelled a diverse pool of US, European and Japanese asset backed securities, some of which came from the books of US asset manager Liberty Hampshire, which owns the $50m equity piece.

RBS Financial Markets this week closed a repackaging of £34m of the £60m 'D' tranche of Aurora Funding (No 1) plc, the securitisation of Sumitomo Bank's UK corporate loans that Lehman Brothers (books) and Greenwich NatWest lead managed in April 1998. The deal used RBS's Lunar Funding III Ltd repackaging programme, incorporated in the Cayman Islands. The programme's Series 10 issue comprised £22.1m of 'A' notes rated A3 by Moody's and £11.9m of 'B' bonds rated Ba1.