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DESPITE the recent surge in confidence in global stockmarkets, the sale of stock in Fox Entertainment by News Corporation has been postponed. Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of the multinational media group, this week announced that market turmoil has resulted in the delay of the $2.5bn flotation.

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BANQUE Nationale de Paris, Citibank and Paribas are near to closing off the co-arranging phase of the jumbo Ffr19bn credit for Carrefour. After speculation that the deal was too tight to succeed in the present difficult market, arrangers report that a strong response has been received and that the deal is already fully subscribed.

ACTIVITY in the German small-cap primary market is set to continue, with Robert Fleming to lead manage its first deal on the Neuer Markt (NM) next week. The UK firm, which has missed out on the recent NM boom, has won the mandate to lead the $20m sale of stock in Articon Information Systems. Articon is the privately owned leading provider of Internet security, including auditing protection.

A surprise 25bp cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve on Thursday caused spread tightening of up to 10bp in high grade bonds and between 50bp and 60bp in emerging market debt. The Fed said it was acting in response to growing lender caution and unsettled conditions in financial markets that were restraining the US economy.

HOW MANY more of yesterday's Wall Street heroes will bite the dust? John Meriwether and his Hole In The Wall gang are already being measured for Boot Hill. Nomura's Ethan Penner and CSFB's Andy Stone are down to their last bullet and their last $100m. Mike Vranos, once the fastest mortgage gun at Kidder Peabody, now carries only a water pistol (and that only fires backwards). Julian Robertson of Tiger gunned down six of the seven Samurai but the one Japanese survivor caught Robertson with a round of buck-shot in the duff.

India Barclays Capital is in discussions with two possible co-arrangers for Bina Power Supply Co's $205m project financing.

MORGAN Stanley Dean Witter hopes to launch the £2bn securitisation of contracted and future revenues for Formula One, the UK company that promotes international motor sport, in the next two weeks, and will issue a prospectus next week. "The premarketing phase has gone extremely well, considering the ugly market we had last week," said Jim O'Brien, head of investment grade credit trading at Morgan Stanley. "We have three teams of salespeople visiting European investors with representatives of Formula One, and another team in Asia, and the feedback from investors has been very positive."

NOMURA International has begun marketing the £155m securitisation of cashflows from 569 tenanted pubs for UK brewer Marston, Thompson & Evershed. The deal will be Nomura's first agency securitisation in Europe -- the bookrunner plans to launch the bond in two to three weeks.

VIRGIN Rail Group, which operates two train services in the UK, has appointed Royal Bank of Scotland and Lombard GATX as preferred financiers for its two orders of high technology tilting trains. The deals are set to close by year end. Rolling stock leasing company Angel Train Contracts, which RBS acquired from Nomura's principal finance group in December 1997, will buy 55 trains with a maximum speed of 140 miles per hour from Alstom and Fiat Ferroviaria for over £500m, and lease them to VRG for its West Coast Main Line route.

* Australian investment bank Macquarie Bank is considering selling PUMA, the mortgage securitisation business that has become one of the country's most successful mortgage backed issuers. The bank has invited bids, but not committed itself to a sale. PUMA is a rare animal -- it neither originates mortgages nor lead manages securitisations. Instead, it processes mortgages written by independent non-bank originators into securitisable pools, and awards mandates to investment banks.

A convertible grants the bondholder the right to convert the bond into a predetermined number of shares of common stock, i.e. the bondholder is long a call on the issuer's stock.