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LEHMAN BROTHERS has launched two huge mortgage securitisations from its Sasco shelf in the past week, prompting market participants to surmise that the bank was anxious to take assets off-balance sheet as quickly as possible. But other sources said the deals were planned months ago to be launched now. Sasco Series 1998-C3 was the largest commercial mortgage backed security ever issued, offering $3.872bn of floating rate paper in at least 20 tranches. The deal came at spreads so wide that even CMBS professionals who have been coping with turmoil in the sector for the last few weeks were surprised.

* CIBC executed its second collateralised loan obligation this week, placing $4.6bn of triple-A paper into its US asset backed CP conduit SPARC and selling the junior tranches as bonds through Goldman Sachs. "We were delighted to get the deal done in a market as difficult as this," said an official at CIBC in New York. "The structure is designed to provide us with the most efficient funding for our corporate loan business, taking into account capital and the wider economics as well as borrowing cost."

PARIBAS RETAIL Financial Services, the former Compagnie Bancaire, unveiled a new structure in the French asset backed market with a Ffr4.28bn issue last Friday -- the master trust. Master Noria is the first fonds commun de créances (French securitisation vehicle) that can issue multiple series of bonds. Cetelem, a unit of PRFS that writes consumer loans, will use the vehicle for regular securitisations. Each deal will share collateral with all the others.

If the Black-Scholes model and its extensions were the discoveries of the 70s and 80s, then value-at-risk models are the darlings of the 90s.

THE MALAYSIAN government this week embarked on its domestically-financed national rejuvenation programme with the launch of a first government-backed issue for bank recapitalisation vehicle Danamodal Nasional Berhad. The first in a trio of such deals, with the asset management company Danaharta Nasional Berhad and Infrastructure Development Corp (IDC) to come, traders reported that the M$11bn issue was rapidly snapped up by 57 financial institutions and is unlikely to trade heavily.

* ABN Amro has become the 15th foreign bank to receive approval to operate a branch in Beijing. The branch is expected to open during the first quarter of 1999. ABN already has branches in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, as well as representative offices in Guangzhou, Tianjin and Wuhan. * Another bank pulled out of the Australian government bond market this week when Citibank closed its trading desk following the merger with Salomon Smith Barney.

CABLE & Wireless Optus will begin roadshows in Australia next week, followed by a week in Europe and the US before the deal closes on November 12. Pricing will take place over the following weekend before allocations on November 16, and trading commences on November 17. Merrill Lynch and Warburg Dillon Read are lead managers. Bankers are confident the defensive nature of the sector and the spectacular success of the NTT DoCoMo offer will rub off on the deal. Retail investors will pay A$1.85 a share. Based on Mayne Nickless' share price fall of A$1.50 since the entitlement period passed, the Optus share could go for up to A$2.80. However, bankers believe an institutional price of closer to A$2.50 is more likely.

* Merrill Lynch has won a mandate to structure a commercial mortgage backed security for Wharf Holdings, one of Hong Kong's leading property companies. And Shine Hill Funding, the $500m securitisation for Hong Kong property company Great Eagle of a single mortgage on part of the Citibank Plaza building, may now come back to life.

* Moody's Investors Service has assigned a local currency issuer rating of A1 to the government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. Moody's issuer ratings are opinions of the ability of entities to honour senior unsecured financial obligations. In the case of Hong Kong, the government has no direct obligations that are rated. However, Moody's has in the past said that A1 local currency ratings of two government-owned railway companies (the Mass Transit Railway Corporation and the Kowloon Canton Railway Corporation) were indicative of the government's ratings.

SIGNS THAT Asian bond spreads may have begun the long, slow road to recovery have been gaining strength following a 10 day run which has seen benchmark sovereign issues from the region tighten in by an average of 150bp. Typical was the Korea 10 year bond, which narrowed from a spread of 700bp to 560bp. The Indonesia bond due 2006 moved most in absolute terms, from 1,800bp to 1,500bp.

THE INDIAN government has postponed the sale of GDRs for Container Corporation of India (Concor) but will press ahead with a sale in the domestic market and will retain Warburg Dillon Read in the lead manager role. Bankers said that the deal could take place rapidly, although they were uncertain over whether an agreement had been reached on pricing. Previous efforts to sell Concor shares have been scuppered by the government's determination to price close to the market level, despite a tiny free float artificially inflating share prices.

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