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ABN Amro this week launched a $200m securitisation for project company Companhia Petrolífera Marlim, the proceeds of which will fund development of the Campo de Marlim oilfield off the coast of Brazil's Rio de Janeiro region. "We were looking to launch earlier this year," said a securitisation official at ABN Amro in London, "but in the third quarter Petrobras changed its accounting practices to US GAAP, so we had to wait. Once the paperwork was completed, we immediately launched the marketing process."

Italy's largest life assurance company, Alleanza Assicurazioni, launched what is believed to be the first securitisation of life policy loans last Friday (December 10), in a Eu278.3m transaction via Salomon Smith Barney. Like most Italian life assurers, Alleanza extends loans to holders of its life policies who would otherwise have to seek a consumer loan from a bank. The loans have the unique characteristic that the borrowers cannot default.

The controversy over the German government's plan to privatise the housing estate of the national railway company Deutsche Bahn blew up into a full scale national scandal this week. The Green Party has discovered that the owners of the largest member of the German consortium bidding for the 112,000 homes donated DM6m to the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) in September 1998, just three months after the CDU government decided to sell the properties to the consortium.

* Banca Nazionale del Lavoro is on the verge of awarding a mandate to buy or securitise non-performing loans, mostly mortgages, with a face value of Lit2.8tr (Eu1.45bn). JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Paribas are in contention. JP Morgan is offering to buy the assets outright, and Morgan Stanley's track record suggests that it would do the same, while Paribas proposes to pay a reduced purchase price ahead of securitisation and let the seller keep the equity. The deal is likely to emerge in the first half of next year.

UK PROPERTY company NHP Plc, which provides finance for operators of nursing homes for the elderly through sale and leaseback transactions, responded this week to criticisms of the property valuation it used for its most recent securitisation, Care Homes No 3 Ltd. Peter Champness, a director of healthcare consultancy LCS International Consulting Ltd, wrote to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors last week, alleging that the valuation performed by DTZ Debenham Thorpe was in breach of RICS guidelines and could have "materially misled the potential purchasers of the bonds." The RICS is reported to be considering whether to refer the complaint to a panel on professional conduct.

ABN Amro launched the first securitisation of Dutch consumer loans last Friday (December 10), in a further sign that the bank is emerging as one of Europe's most ardent securitisers. The Eu1.376bn issue is also the largest securitisation of the asset class in Europe. "The deal went fine, despite the late timing," said a syndicate official at ABN Amro in London. "The pricing was a little bit difficult, because the market is thinner at this time of year. We postponed launch by a day to make sure the bonds were fully preplaced. Due diligence is harder to do when firms are 60%-70% staffed."

In last week's issue of DW we looked at the treatment of credit risk in the recently released consultation paper by the European Commission on new capital adequacy rules for European Union financial institutions, and compared it to similar proposals by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.