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LEHMAN Brothers has closed off the co-arranging phase of the senior secured debt portion of the facilities backing Morgan Grenfell Private Equity's £390m purchase of Coral, the UK-based betting chain. Nine banks were invited into the deal and offered tickets of £40m for a fee of 125bp. By the end of the co-arranging phase seven banks had joined the deal, raising £280m -- an excellent result considering the anxiety showed by many in the market before the deal was launched.

Egypt Expect news over the next few weeks of one of Egypt's top five banks tapping the international syndicated loan market.

MERITA and Merrill Lynch have won the fiercely contested mandate to be joint global co-ordinators for the flotation of Aleksia, the Finnish property holding company, which will become one of the few listed property investment stocks in the Nordic region. "This deal was being chased by the big guns from several US firms," said one local banker. "Aleksia has a unique position in the Finnish property market and is well placed to take advantage of booming economic conditions in Helsinki."

GLOBAL co-ordinator Morgan Stanley Dean Witter made the most of the sharp recovery in the US stockmarket yesterday (Thursday) by executing the hugely successful $3.1bn sale of stock in Equant, the Atlanta and Amsterdam-based data communications carrier. The firm's ordinary shares, trading in Paris and New York, have performed spectacularly since the group's $810m IPO last summer when they were priced at $27 (Ffr161.66).

NATIONAL Grid has offered a working mandate to a group of banks to arrange the debt facility that will, in part, finance Grid's $3.2bn agreed purchase of New England Electric System. Six banks have the working mandate -- ABN Amro, Barclays, Chase (joint bookrunner), Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (joint bookrunner) and HSBC, two more than originally expected.

AFTER A BOUT of nerves at the beginning of this week, the US market recovered yesterday (Thursday) buoyed by a rally in technology stocks, with internet companies leading the way. The volume of issuance was undiminished by the market jitters, and this week was busy for both new and secondary offerings.

* As foreshadowed in EW587, Russia's Uneximbank has scooped the unwelcome prize of being the first Russian bank to default on its Euromarket debt. The bank, once a leading light of the Russian banking sector, last week failed to make the $12.4m coupon payment on its $250m 9.875% August 1, 2000 issue, which fell due on Monday (February 1), having already missed the January 27 interest payment date on a $50m three year floating rate note private placement from 1997. Both issues were lead managed by Merrill Lynch.

* Goldman Sachs has been appointed to advise Scottish Power, the UK utility, on its plans to list its telecommunications subsidiary, Scottish Telecom. The division includes Demon, one of the UK's largest internet providers. After a difficult start-up phase, Scottish Telecom has begun making money and its management is keen to see this reflected in the issue price of the group's shares. Early indications from analysts in London put the group's assets at between £1.1bn and £2bn.

PART ONE OF the long awaited financing for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link finally reached the market this week -- and lead managers HSBC and Warburg Dillon Read achieved a much better price for the £1.65bn of UK government guaranteed bonds than expected.