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A consortium of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs is locked in a bidding battle with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter to buy Credito Fondiario e Industriale SpA (Fonspa), an Italian mortgage bank. The bidders are finalising their due diligence and must submit bids at the end of next week.

Ireland's largest mortgage lender, Irish Life & Permanent Plc, securitised its domestic home loans for the first time this week, in a Eu600m deal that is the biggest securitisation of Irish assets. Before its merger with Irish Life earlier this year, Irish Permanent had taken its UK mortgage portfolio off balance sheet with a £400m securitisation arranged, like this week's deal, by Greenwich NatWest. Launched last November, Auburn Securities 1 parcelled loans originated by Capital Home Loans Ltd, a UK non-bank lender acquired by Irish Permanent in 1996.

* UK healthcare company Bupa will launch its £250m securitisation of operating revenues from nursing homes next week through Merrill Lynch. UK Care No 1 will comprise £185m of fixed rate triple-A bonds and £65m of single-A paper with average lives over 20 years and final maturity in 2029. The senior notes will mature as a bullet through a swap. * Paribas plans to launch its securitisation of employee mortgages for Electricité de France, worth nearly Eu1bn, next week. The bank will bring the Eu1bn Domos 6 mortgage securitisation for its subsidiary Paribas Retail Financial Services the following week.

European options on an underlying S were initially introduced as a mean of protection against a rise or fall of S between today and the expiry of the option.

The Asian Development Bank all but wrapped up its funding requirements for the year this week when it launched a surprise $1bn three year global bond. The ADB took advantage of a dramatic tightening in swap and credit spreads at the beginning of the week and strong demand for short dated paper by triple-A names, making an opportunistic bid to reposition itself in the public bond markets. However, while few could find fault with the bank's strategy, its timing fell short of luck.

Hyundai Electronics completed its debut $100m GDR sale this week via first time lead manager in the Korean market Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. A total of 6.62m underlying shares were sold with two shares to each GDR.

Deutsche Bank this week launched a Eu160m securitisation of Japanese auto loans for QUOQ Inc - the first Japanese ABS to be sold in a foreign currency since mid-June. Deutsche officials could not be reached for comment, but market participants said the deal's denomination in euros was a further sign that the single currency is eclipsing the dollar as the currency of choice for international Japanese asset backed issues.

Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) embarked on the second phase of efforts to persuade investors to accept changes to the documentation its Euro-MTN programme when it launched a roughly $930m tender offering via Warburg Dillon Read this week. Kepco had failed to obtain the necessary 75% approval level for a straight waiver to event of default clauses in its existing documentation. It has since been persuaded to offer more generous terms to investors and is offering a roughly three point pick up to most investors.

The logjam in Asian equity deals has forced Credit Suisse First Boston to pull Thai Military Bank's (TMB) $1bn share issue following last week's postponement of Korea Exchange Bank's $1bn GDR sale. Bankers said withdrawal of some sales was inevitable given the glut of new issues trying to price before investors close their books in advance of Y2K.

A wide range of Japanese investors snapped up Mazda Credit Co's second securitisation of Japanese auto loans this week, drawn by the chance to pick up extra yield in a market where corporate spreads have dwindled almost to nothing. Sole manager Goldman Sachs had planned to sell the ¥47bn deal in dollars, and adopted a Euromarket structure and documentation, but when the time came to launch it the Japanese market proved more attractive and all the bonds were sold in yen.

The Japanese government will announce its plans for the sale of a $12bn stake in Nippon Telegraph & Telephone today (Friday), heralding the largest international equity offering of the year. Pre-marketing for the 952,000 share sale will begin on Monday with roadshows due to launch a week later. The deal will close during the first week of November and was timed to prevent a clash with the A$17bn Telstra offer.

Debt issuance from Asia is set to be dominated by China until the end of the month, with roadshows starting next week for both China Telecom (CT) and the Export Import Bank of China (Chexim). To avoid directly competing against each other, the two borrowers are to begin presentations at opposite ends of the globe with Chexim kicking off presentations in London in the middle of next week and China Telecom in Singapore on Monday.