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As the first quarter of the year draws to a close, bond market participants will be hoping that the inauspicious dawn of the new millennium will soon be forgotten. Barely a week has passed this year without an event that has forced borrowers, banks and investors to revise their plans. The most disruptive force has been ever wider swap spreads - exactly the opposite movement to that many forecast at the beginning of the year.

France Banks have signed up to the £1.65bn deal for Thomson-CSF, backing its acquisition of Racal Electronics of the UK. The facility was popular and the oversubscription led to a 40% cut in final allocations.

* Bayerische Hypo-und Vereinsbank AG Rating: Aa3/A+/AA-

Co-ordinating arranger Citibank has launched the long awaited jumbo facility for Fortum, the Finnish power generator that is acquiring electricity plants from Sweden's Stora Enso. It is thought to be the biggest ever syndicated facility for a Finnish corporate. The Eu1.5bn facility has five arrangers. Citibank was first with the mandate and underwrote the whole deal. It now holds an underwriting stake of Eu500m, while the other four arrangers - Chase Manhattan, Deutsche Bank, MeritaNordbanken and SEB - have underwritten Eu250m each.

France Télécom this week raised over Eu5bn through a two tranche floating rate note in euros and dollars, taking advantage of spread widening and volatility in fixed rate markets to tap into a wave of demand for defensive instruments.

France Télécom this week raised over Eu5bn through a two tranche floating rate note in euros and dollars, taking advantage of spread widening and volatility in fixed rate markets to tap into a wave of demand for defensive instruments.

Goldman Sachs as sole lead bookrunner and BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole Indosuez as joint arrangers have launched one of Europe's largest leveraged financings to co-arrangers. The deal is the leveraged recapitalisation of the Elis Group, the successful French laundry company bought out in 1997 by BC Partners, the US equity sponsor. The recapitalisation involves the raising of $1bn of senior debt and $130m of subordinated debt and will enable BC Partners to take its shareholder loans out of the transaction.

INTERNATIONAL bond issuance from central and eastern Europe took another bold step forward this week when bookrunner Warburg Dillon Read launched a Eu150m three year issue for Estonia’s Hansabank — the first major Euromarket offering by a bank from the region since before the Russian crisis in August 1998.

INTERNATIONAL bond issuance from central and eastern Europe took another bold step forward this week when bookrunner Warburg Dillon Read launched a Eu150m three year issue for Estonia’s Hansabank — the first major Euromarket offering by a bank from the region since before the Russian crisis in August 1998.

* Enitel Rating: B3/B-

European high yield investors, who have been threatening to lose interest because of the parlous state of the US sub-investment grade bond market, finally reacted at the end of last week following the pricing of a $1.6bn offering from ISP company Winstar. The transaction was divided between three dollar tranches and a 10 year offering in euros, which came with a refreshing 12.75% coupon.

The International Finance Corp revised its plans of a 10 year maturity for its debut $1bn global this week, preferring to stick to five years and venture no further along the curve. Given the volatility in US markets, many observers thought this wise. Treasury officials at the IFC said the distress suffered by agencies had been crucial to the decision to go ahead. After Gary Gensler's comments last week, and Phil Gramm's announcement this week that Senate hearings on the status of agencies would be held this summer, capital has been exiting agency product rapidly. The major beneficiaries have been supranationals, and IFC's $1bn five year note also profited .