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TECHNOLOGY and telecom companies maintained their stranglehold over the London new issue market this week with the completion of Geo Interactive Media and the launch of Flag Telecom, Scipher and Interactive Investor International. Geo Interactive Media priced its £220m share offering yesterday (Thursday) achieving a 3.5 times subscription following a steep run-up in the price of the London listed stock.

Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi and BNP Paribas have won the mandate to arrange a Eu250m facility for Agricultural Bank of Greece. Bidding was unusually competitive this year for the regular one year loan. Seven groups tabled bids, with six of them thought to be offering pricing in the same region - just below last year's level. But one group set a more aggressive level and won the mandate.

Market report: Compiled by Jim Webber,

THE INTER-AMERICAN Development Bank (IADB) this week launched a $2bn 10 year global bond, its biggest offering to date and the first to specifically target the US investor base. The deal, led by Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, was more than 60% sold into the US - a significant rise from the 25% US distribution its Eurobond issuance usually attracts.

THE INTER-AMERICAN Development Bank (IADB) this week launched a $2bn 10 year global bond, its biggest offering to date and the first to specifically target the US investor base. The deal, led by Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, was more than 60% sold into the US - a significant rise from the 25% US distribution its Eurobond issuance usually attracts.

Arrangers SBI International Merchant Banking Corp and State Bank of India (Tokyo) and National Thermal Power Corp have signed the heavily oversubscribed ¥8.7172bn term loan. The facility amount was not increased. The State Bank of India's branches in Bahrain, Singapore and Tokyo will provide ¥1.4172bn.

ING BARINGS was formally confirmed this week as the lead manager of an exchange offer for the Republic of Ukraine's foreign currency bonds. The exchange is designed to provide a solution to the conundrum whereby Ukraine faces a debt servicing burden of $3bn in 2000 armed with just $1bn of foreign exchange reserves. Included in the exchange, further details of which will be released on February 4, are a Eu500m 14.75% March 2000 euro-fungible issue, a $71m October 2000 amortising fiduciary transaction, $258m due on an amortising zero coupon dollar offering due September 2000, a DM1.53bn 16% February 2001 Deutschmark bond, and $300m of domestic bond debt owed to Russia's Gazprom.

The internet bond revolution embraced the ABS market this week as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter launched the first securitisation to be distributed on-line - a $526.316m credit card deal for its subsidiary Discover Financial Services. Investors in the US and Europe used Morgan Stanley's ClientLink website to review information about the deal, post indications of interest and make orders.

* Chase Manhattan Bank priced its first collateralised loan obligation this week, after a marketing period longer than some market participants had expected. Chase Loan Obligations USA Trust 2000-1 offered $997.5m of notes backed by a similar quantity of US corporate loans. Chase, which lead managed its own deal, declined to comment, citing 144A restrictions.

Nomura's principal finance group has been selected for the preliminary shortlist to acquire London's Millennium Dome after the Millennium Experience exhibition closes at the end of this year. The six shortlisted bidders have until the end of March to submit detailed proposals, including financial terms. Two or three candidates will then be chosen for the final stage.

The Eu4.65bn securitisation of delinquent contributions by the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Soziale, which manages the Italian social security system, is now trading significantly wider than the spreads at which it was launched by Caboto, Merrill Lynch and Paribas at the end of November. The widening calls into question the leads' claim during syndication that the INPS deal should trade tighter than mainstream ABS because of its size, liquidity and close connection to the Italian government.

Jersey-based legal and financial services partnership The Mourant Group is extending its securitisation related operations to London. This week the firm hired Margaret Bonsall, a former partner at Linklaters & Paines, to head a new London-based team providing multi-jurisdictional special purpose vehicle administration for ABS. And Mourant intends to move Jonathan Walker, one of its partners, to London in April to practice Jersey law nearer to the sources of business.