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TOKYO-MITSUBISHI International has hired Stafford Butt, assistant director of the securitisation group at ING Barings in London. Butt will start at TMI in mid-March as director, charged with boosting the bank's ABS business in Europe. Richard Sullivan, head of securitisation for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and non-Japan Asia, has recently recruited two others to work on European securitisation. Gianfranco Simionato moved to TMI as an associate director at the end of December - the same rank he held in Warburg Dillon Read's London asset backed finance group. Alessandro Gatto has also joined as an associate.

LEMY GRESH, managing director and head of structured securitisations at Deutsche Bank in London, is said to be leaving the bank, apparently for a sabbatical. There was no official confirmation of the move, but sources expect the structured securitisation team to merge with Deutsche's main European securitisation group, headed by Tamara Adler. Deutsche has kept two securitisation groups in London since its merger with Bankers Trust in June 1999. The seven-strong BT securitisation team, run by Gresh, was one of the most highly regarded in the industry, and Deutsche opted in 1999 to preserve it as a separate unit rather than risk losing it to a rival.

Fitch IBCA this week downgraded FILMS Plc, the innovative securitisation of revenues from an Italian film library that Merrill Lynch arranged for the Cecchi Gori media group in February 1998. The downgrade from A- to BBB- is almost unique in European structured finance, both in its severity and in that it reflects concern about the deal's fundamental creditworthiness, rather than an unrelated change in a counterparty's rating.

DORIAN KLEIN is to retire from Merrill Lynch, where he leads the southern Europe corporate and municipal team in the European structured finance group. He will be replaced by Dominique Lemaire, until now head of Latin American structured finance at Merrill in New York. Klein is eyeing a number of career options, but is most likely to join an internet venture.

? WestLB this week launched an Eu96.7m securitisation of equipment leases for a subsidiary of Banco di Napoli. Special purpose vehicle Landes SRI offered two tranches of amortising bonds with a legal maturity of July 2007, rated by Fitch IBCA and Moody's. The Eu78.8m 'A' note, rated triple-A, priced at 30bp over three month Euribor with a 2.34 year average life. Class 'B', worth Eu18.8m and rated A+/A1, came at 68bp over with an average life of 3.44 years.

In this week's Learning Curve, we are presenting the Financial Accounting Standard Board's accounting standards for over-the-counter weather derivatives in connection with nontrading activities.

A FLOOD of Taiwanese convertible bonds emerged this week including a groundbreaking $150m deal for Far Eastern Textile (FET) led by Goldman Sachs, which generated over $1bn in demand. The issue was one of four convertibles from Taiwan that are either in the market or about to be launched, with Jardine Fleming launching a $150m bond for Mosel Vitelic, exchangeable into shares of ProMos Technologies, Deutsche Bank marketing a $180m deal for Macronix and Goldman poised to launch a $200m convertible for Acer with a similar structure to the FET bonds.

AEP RESOURCES CitiPower 1 pty Ltd is set to become the first domestic Australian corporate to use a credit wrap to achieve finer pricing, with the launch this Wednesday of an A$400m transaction. The BBB+ rated Melbourne-based electricity distributor has used Ambac Assurance Corp to wrap its seven year deal that is to be led by Salomon Smith Barney, SG and Warburg Dillon Read.

BEIJING Capital International Airport's (BCIA) $500m IPO was in full swing this week with the roadshow taking place in continental Europe and the UK before jetting off for the US leg of the trip. Bankers at ABN Amro report strong interest from Europe - the base of much of the world's specialist airport infrastructure investors - following visits from the management teams of BCIA and Aeroports de Paris.

KOREA Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) is preparing to raise $500m in five year funds this March and is therefore likely to be the first of the republic's mainstream borrowers to access the international debt markets in 2000. Treasury officials said that the group is planning to make a decision on which market to tap in the middle of February, with the intention of launching a deal one month later.

Oversea Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC) is looking likely to become the second Singaporean entity to launch a bank capital transaction. It is formulating plans to raise about $300m in dated upper tier 2 debt via Goldman Sachs. Although observers say that launch is a few months off, the bank is almost at the end of its ratings process with Standard & Poor's and Moody's.

COMMONWEALTH Bank of Australia (CBA) took its first steps into Japan's retail market this week with the launch of a A$120m three year issue via Nomura Securities. Only the second ever Australian issuer to tap the sector, CBA follows the lead set by Westpac which began placing paper with Uridashi investors in the middle of 1998. "This issue fits into the third plank of our global funding strategy which aims for the launch of periodic benchmark issues, Euro-MTN structured trades and regionally targeted transactions," said John Te Wechel, a CBA treasury official.