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The Chicago Board of Trade got off to a somewhat embarrassing start when it unveiled its new 10 year agency note futures contract on Wednesday: its Bloomberg quote system broke down, leaving users with no access to live prices. "We got off to a rocky start," admitted a CBOT official.

ABN AMRO completed a Eu450m convertible bond offering for Dutch IT solutions firm Getronics yesterday (Thursday) following a wave of equity-linked issuance last week. The company sold the five year bonds with both the yield to maturity and conversion premium coming in the middle of indicated ranges.

Ten year dollar swap spreads traded at 112.5bp over the 6.5% February 2010 Treasury yesterday (Thursday), perilously close to the 117bp intra-day price of August 1999 and the levels seen during the Asian crisis of 1998. At the beginning of the year - when 10 year swaps were trading around 80bp - most dealers had expected swap spreads to compress over the near term. But they had counted without the effect of the Treasury buyback programme.

* DePfa Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG Rating: Aa3/AA (Moody's/Fitch IBCA)

Romania The Romanian Ministry for Public Works has received a $120m loan to build housing and water systems in Romanian villages.

Argentina * Province of Buenos Aires

* Banca Agrileasing SpA Rating: A-/A- (S&P/Fitch IBCA)

* Air Products & Chemicals Inc Rating: A3/A

SALOMON Smith Barney brought contrasting deals to the European high yield bond market this week, one a highly successful deal for Slovak mobile phone company EuroTel Bratislava, the other a disappointing transaction for carriers' carrier, Flag Telecom. Eurotel's Eu175m 11.25% 2007 issue, which traded up to 103.00 bid from par when the deal broke yesterday (Thursday), was more than four times oversubscribed. Priced at the tight end of the range, the transaction was sold one third into the US and two thirds into Europe.

Crédit Agricole Indosuez and Crédit Lyonnais have won the mandate to arrange a Eu1.155bn loan for Fimalac, the parent company of Fitch IBCA. The rating agency is merging with US counterpart Duff & Phelps, and the deal will back that transaction. The facility is split into three tranches. The 'A' tranche is a Eu265m amortising term loan maturing at the end of this year. The 'B' tranche is an Eu585m amortising term loan maturing in June next year. The 'C' tranche is a Eu305m revolver with a five year tenor.

FANNIE Mae and Freddie Mac's position as Treasury surrogates was further cemented this week as trading in agency note futures contracts commenced on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Cantor Exchange (CX). CME and CX are trading both five year and 10 year contracts while the CBOT started with the 10 year, stating that it would launch five year contracts as soon as the market demands it.