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SALOMON Smith Barney has joined Chase Manhattan and Deutsche Bank as lead arranger of the three debt leveraged debt facilities backing Hicks, Muse Tate & Furst's buy-out of Hillsdown Holdings, the food-to-furniture group. The three lead arrangers are to launch the three facilities today (Friday), ending the intense speculation that has surrounded the deal. Market interest has been high - many bankers have been intrigued as to the structure that the arrangers will adopt for the sale of such a wide ranging conglomerate.

Deutsche Bank further expanded the nascent Portuguese securitisation market last Friday, launching its largest deal yet, backed by a broad mixture of corporate and retail assets. Tagus Financing No 1 is backed by assets from two subsidiaries of Banco Mello, Portugal's sixth largest banking group. In March 1998 Mello became the second Portuguese institution to use securitisation, when Deutsche's Rheingold ABCP conduit bought Esc15bn of unsecured consumer loans from the bank.

Paribas launched a highly unusual securitisation this week, parcelling 2,300 small business loans for Sodie SA, a subsidiary of French steelmaker Usinor whose mission is to promote employment in regions of France where the steel industry has contracted, putting people out of work. In the diversity of its exposure, the deal is most closely comparable to Deutsche's CORE collateralised loan obligation, which parcels very large numbers of loans to small and medium sized German businesses, and to Gerling Insurance Group's SECTRS transaction in March this year, which conveyed exposure to a reference portfolio of 92,000 European companies as a hedge for Gerling's credit insurance book.

US credit card bank MBNA appeared in the Euromarkets in two guises this week, selling Eu500m of bonds backed by US collateral through MAESTRO 6, and a £250m securitisation of its UK portfolio, CARDS 9. The US asset deal is MBNA's second in euros - at the end of April the bank became the first American institution to securitise in the single currency, with a Eu750m five year floater, lead managed by Credit Suisse First Boston.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia this week priced an A$180m bond issue, completing Australia's first synthetic collateralised loan obligation. Medallion Credit Linked Trust Series 1999-1 issued four hard bullet five year tranches rated by Moody's and Standard & Poor's. Proceeds are invested in Commonwealth government securities, and a credit default swap subjects noteholders to the risk on $1.5bn of CBA's exposure to 104 corporates and banks.

Earned run averages do the job for baseball pitchers.

European investors this week digested the first two courses of an extended banquet of mortgage backed issues from Australian lenders. Deutsche Bank sold $500m of bonds backed by Australian mortgages for Macquarie Securitisation Ltd, while Westpac brought the first Euromarket securitisation of New Zealand mortgages, in a $350.5m deal through Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Both deals have been successfully sold, but the crowded market and rivalry between investment banks led to disagreements over pricing - now almost commonplace in the highly competitive international Australian MBS market.

Two triple-A rated European issuers took advantage of improving conditions in the Australian dollar market this week to bring A$1bn of new supply to the Kangaroo sector. Deutsche Siedlungs-und Landesrentenbank (DSL) took the market by surprise when it came first, on Monday, with a A$500m issue. DSL was followed on Wednesday by Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), which launched an inaugural A$500m transaction.

Hong Kong Great Wall Technology appeared before the Hong Kong listing committee yesterday (Thursday), presaging a $120m to $150m offer within weeks.

Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) made its debut in its domestic debt markets this week. Its offering provoked a strong response from investors, but caused displeasure among its general syndicate - all of whom, bar one, walked away from a formal underwriting commitment. The success of the deal from one of the strongest statutory board credits, was regarded as almost a given by most market participants, all of whom commented that final pricing was extremely fair.

The fate of two bond issues from the Philippines this week threw into sharp relief investors' markedly different acceptance of Asian corporate borrowers at either ends of the credit spectrum. Market participants commented that the contrasting reception to offerings by Ayala Corporation and Bayan Telecommunications Corporation (BayanTel) highlights just how far the region's bond markets have recovered since the financial crisis of 1997.