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n Dresdner Bank AG Rating: Aa3/AA/AA

FOLLOWING THE successful merger of Sweden's Telia and Norway's Telinor two weeks ago, the company has announced that some 20% of its equity capital will be sold in one of the largest IPOs of 2000. The deal is also likely to be one of the largest equity offerings to emerge from the Nordic region. The Nordic markets have produced little in the way of sizeable corporate issuance, relying instead on privatisations such as the sale of stock in Finland's national operator, Sonera.

THOMSON MULTIMEDIA became a publicly quoted company this week in one of the most successful of the French Trésor's privatisation sales. The sale involved the issue of 19,194,816 shares. Some 12,817,315 were fed to institutional markets with 6,377,501 marketed to retail investors and 2,063,524 allocated as an over-allotment option.

The Republic of Turkey enjoyed a blow-out success on its return to the dollar markets last Friday (October 29), with investors piling into its $500m five year global bond. A tightening of the yield on the 6% August 2004 Treasury on Friday morning to 5.95% meant the Turks were able to achieve the sub-12% nominal yield target which was a key prerequisite for the issue.

The Republic of Turkey enjoyed a blow-out success on its return to the dollar markets last Friday (October 29), with investors piling into its $500m five year global bond. A tightening of the yield on the 6% August 2004 Treasury on Friday morning to 5.95% meant the Turks were able to achieve the sub-12% nominal yield target which was a key prerequisite for the issue.

The successful $250m revolver for MG plc has closed with an oversubscription of about 25% and will be signed today (Friday). Several banks chose not to join the facility but have instead provided bilaterals on slightly different terms. The facility has not been increased and banks' allocations have been scaled back.

n Fannie Mae Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA

n Western Corporate Federal Credit Union (WesCorp) Rating: Aa3/AA-

ABN AMRO Rothschild and Merrill Lynch have launched the Eu1.1bn capital increase for the Dutch publishing group, VNU. This involves the sale of between Eu250m and Eu500m in convertible bonds and between Eu600m to Eu850m of straight equity.

THE US HIGH YIELD market showed renewed life this week when VoiceStream Wireless Corp priced a highly successful $1.503bn bond issue - one of the biggest telecom offerings since July. The deal helps lift an eight week long curse on the high yield market: persistent mutual fund outflows and investor worries about Y2K - many have developed an aversion to anything but top rated corporate bond issues - has made for an unpredictable and consequently soft market.

Warburg Dillon Read is hoping to launch the first ever Eurobond by an Egyptian borrower in the week beginning, Monday, November 15. The bank is building a book for the planned $100m-$200m five year Euro/144A dollar issue for healthcare and industrial conglomerate, Lakah Group. The company has a BB+ rating from Fitch IBCA - one notch below the agency's BBB- sovereign ceiling for Egypt. Market speculation is that Lakah will need to pay a launch spread of at least 500bp to tempt investors to buy a deal from a country which has no obvious pricing references.

Markets gave a unanimous thumbs-up to the European Central Bank's decision to raise its repo rate by 50bp yesterday (Thursday), ending weeks of uncertainty over the outlook for interest rates. Not only was the increase already priced into the market, but the decision to opt for a 50bp rise rather than a 25bp rise to maintain stability for longer periods boosted confidence in the ECB.