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BANKERS Trust, UK property investment company IM Properties, and property entrepreneur Nigel Wright have formed a new joint venture to acquire 23 companies that own over 1,200 residential properties in the UK. First Residential Investment Ltd (FRIL) has bought the companies for £56m from a major building society. They were created in the early 1990s under the government's Business Expansion Scheme, that allowed private investors to shelter money from tax by paying off building societies' bad debts on properties repossessed during the housing recession. Most of these companies have now paid back all their investors, and own the housing free of debt.

MERRILL Lynch last week extended a £200m loan to finance Mercury Asset Management's £290m acquisition of Greycoat plc, a listed UK property company that owns some 20 office properties in the City and West End of London. "The deal is a combination of mortgage finance technology and leveraged buyout lending," said John Nacos, European head of Merrill Lynch's mortgage capital and real estate group.

JP MORGAN held a European roadshow last week for the second issue from its new Sequils-Mincs programme of synthetic cashflow collateralised debt obligations. The deal will likely be launched in the next few weeks. Sequils II and Mincs II will offer a similar quantity of bonds to the inaugural deal, launched last month, which consisted of $712.5m of Sequils notes, rated AA by Fitch IBCA, and $114m of Mincs notes, rated BBB. The asset manager will be Pilgrim - TCW Advisors is managing the pool for the first deal.

INTER-DEALER broker Prebon Yamane, which last year began to offer structured finance services, is preparing an innovative securitisation of newly constructed housing in Italy. Prebon hopes to raise $150m for Barialto, a company that is developing a new commercial and residential district 15km southeast of Bari, the most prosperous city in southern Italy.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board's statement of financial accounting for derivative instruments 133, was issued June 1998.

Recent advances in value-at-risk methodology can be effectively applied for risk measurement and management of international equity portfolios.

Australia Salomon Smith Barney and JB Were have launched a debt securities issue for National Australia Bank. The securities, which count as Tier 1 capital, comprise a fully paid note and an unpaid preference share and will be listed on the ASX.

THE CHINA Development Bank (CDB) opted to err on the side of caution in this week's pricing of its long awaited $500m 10 year global bond via Merrill Lynch and Salomon Smith Barney. Breaking a two year issuance hiatus by the Baa1/BBB+ rated credit, the transaction continued a recent pattern from Asia where strong secondary market trading has almost eclipsed the achievements of the primary market.

NEW WORLD Development dominated the Asian equity capital markets this week when it launched a $300m convertible bond sale, completed the reverse listing of its multimedia telecom concerns through Paul Y Properties, and speculation grew about the date of a $500m IPO for its New World China unit. Warburg Dillon Read was lead manager for the convertible sale, which bankers said was a positive development for the Asian convertible sector.

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Bulgaria Expect news in the next weeks of a small deal for First Investment Bank of Bulgaria, which is looking at the market to raise between $10m and $15m. Before the war in Kosovo it was considering a slightly larger facility, perhaps $20m, but has dropped the amount as raising capital may be difficult for the region.

THE SURPRISE resignation of US Treasury secretary Robert Rubin and the shock sacking of Russian premier Yevgeny Primakov failed to dent yield-hungry investors' enthusiasm in what proved the biggest week for emerging markets since the Russian meltdown of August 1998.