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SERVUS Holdings Ltd, a property management company owned by Nomura International's principal finance group, is to acquire the UK facilities management business of construction consultancy Turner & Townsend Group for £4.5m. Nomura aims to strengthen its hand in bidding for large property portfolios. The UK government has announced it will divest some further property estates, including the 750 buildings occupied by the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise. Expressions of interest for that sale are to be solicited in the second quarter of 1999.

ROBERT Palache, managing partner of Clifford Chance's London finance practice and one of the most experienced securitisation lawyers in Europe, is to join Nomura International's principal finance group as joint head of securitisation. Working with Henry Cooke, who has responsibility for sales and trading, Palache will focus on structuring and origination. He will start work on December 1 with the title of director.

* Singer & Friedlander Capital Markets is to be bought out by its management in a deal to be completed by around the end of September. The 25-strong unit is best known as adviser to Asset Backed Capital, a leveraged investment company with $4.2bn under management, and historically a substantial participant in asset-backed markets. "The time had come when we felt it was right for us to go our own ways," said Tim Lyons, a director at S&F Capital Markets. He said that when the company started five years ago it had been aimed at advising corporates on structured transactions; it had since largely developed into a fixed income fund manager.

MBNA International Bank, the UK subsidiary of US credit card issuer MBNA, launched its sixth securitisation this week, a £250m five year floater lead managed by Barclays Capital. "The deal went very well in a volatile market," said a syndicate official at Barclays in London. "At 15bp it would have been a blowout, but at 14bp, in the middle of price talk, the paper was still oversubscribed. MBNA is very responsible in the way it approaches the market -- it knows it will have to come back to the market, and prices to achieve good secondary market performance."

* Tokyo Leasing made its debut in the Japanese asset backed bond market this week with a ¥50bn deal lead managed by DKB Securities. A member of the DKB group, Tokyo Leasing is one of the larger leasing companies in Japan, and has securitised leases in the domestic asset backed commercial paper market.

Last week we looked at alternative measures for risk measurement.

THE ASIAN Development Bank is premarketing a A$500m-plus Kangaroo bond which it hopes to launch within two weeks. Meanwhile, AMP Banking has mandated Westpac as lead manager for its domestic MTN programme. Investors have reacted positively to the ADB issue, prompting speculation that an issue could come as soon as next week. Warburg Dillon Read has been mandated as lead manager on the transaction, but officials at the bank declined to comment and said the issuer was merely considering accessing the domestic Aussie dollar market.

ONE YEAR after the Asian financial crisis began to break, the region's debt markets show little sign of recovery. This week, spreads on the bonds of the leading Asian issuers widened again. Deal flow for the rest of the year is expected to be severely limited. The irony that Russia's currency woes have induced the latest round of spread widening in Asian debt was not lost on the region's bankers -- Russia's own problems first came to light in the wake of the Asian contagion.

A PLACEMENT of Venture Manufacturing shares and the launch of an IPO for Chew Eu Hock (CEH) Holdings breathed life into a moribund Singapore share market this week. ING Barings placed 15m Venture Manufacturing shares from majority stakeholder Metchem Engineering, raising S$63.75m ($36.55). The shares were priced at S$4.25, a 1% discount to the five day average.

* Japan Development Bank launched its first international bond of 1998 this week when it issued ¥25bn of puttable bonds via Tokyo-Mitsubishi International. The 30 year bonds are puttable at years 10, 15, 20 and 25. The structure was used to give investors nervous about the state of the Japanese economy a defensive play. The bonds were all sold to institutions in Europe.

Australia * Colonial has completed an equity placement just three months after its last offering, with a A$264.4m ($155.8m) sale of 53.96m ordinary shares to fund its acquisition of Prudential Corporation's Australian and New Zealand businesses.