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n Bank of Boston came close this week to launching its second collateralised loan obligation, but postponed the $1bn transaction yesterday (Thursday) evening. A spokesperson for the bank told Euroweek that in the face of record issuance in the market in the middle and late part of this week, officials had decided that since the bank did not need the funding, it would be better to wait for a more opportune moment to bring the deal.

Spain's third largest savings bank, Caixa de Catalunya, issued its third securitisation this week - at Eu442m (Pta73.5bn), the deal is relatively large for the Spanish market, and was fully sold to investors. Caixa de Catalunya debuted in June 1998 with a Pta24bn mortgage backed transaction placed with international investors. The bank returned in October with Pta47.5bn of MBS, but although lead manager JP Morgan said at the time the issue attracted significant demand from domestic investors, most of the bonds were retained for use as repo collateral with the Bank of Spain, partly because the market was unfavourable.

Australia's Macquarie Bank this week announced its intention to develop a mortgage securitisation business in China. The bank has been active in China for over five years, and has been investing in housing development since 1996.

Goldman Sachs last Friday launched a Eu461.21m securitisation to refinance its purchase of a portfolio of vehicle and equipment loans, leases and hire purchase contracts from German leasing subsidiaries of ABN Amro, which has discontinued its small ticket leasing business in Germany. Goldman Sachs bought the assets in June and has now securitised the great majority of them.

Banque Nationale de Paris this week joined the small but growing club of banks to publicly execute synthetic collateralised loan obligations - the bank issued Eu180m of bonds conveying the bottom 11% layer of risk on Eu1.635bn of corporate credit exposure. JP Morgan pioneered the technique with its Bistro structure in December 1997 - since then the bulk of trades have been privately and anonymously placed, but last October UBS launched its Eisberg Finance leveraged CLO, and this year Deutsche Bank, Citibank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia have all issued bonds conveying risk on much larger asset portfolios.

The first in a string of planned corporate benchmarks from the Philippines was launched to general acclaim last Friday, when Ayala Corporation returned to the international debt markets with a $200m offering. The 5-1/2 year deal by the Philippines' largest company by market capitalisation had always been expected to go well and was held up by bankers as further evidence of strengthening demand for blue chip Asian corporates.

The prospect of a new benchmark transaction from the Republic of China has taken one step forward and two steps back following a deterioration in relations between the People's Republic and Taiwan. While the sovereign is known to be keen to set a new dollar benchmark within the next couple of months, it is proposing to do so against a rapidly worsening backdrop soured by the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, failed negotiations to join the World Trade Organisation, and continual speculation about a currency devaluation.