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* Alliance Funding Corp launched its first securitisation of the year on Wednesday with a $525m issue wrapped by monoline insurer FGIC. Launched through Alliance Mortgage Loan Trust 1999-1, the transaction marked the return of this regular issuer to the market and was eagerly snapped up by investors.

PPM America, an asset management subsidiary of Prudential, this week launched a $653.8m collateralised bond obligation, offering investors a variety of forms in which to take exposure to high yield bonds. "There was huge interest from Europe in the senior tranches," said a syndicate official at sole manager CSFB. "We had 18 orders, and sold 80% of the triple-A into Europe, to banks, and some Libor funds. PPM is a very good manager, in size and performance, and we were heavily oversubscribed."

Compagnie Vauban, the French property company, and Greenwich NatWest broke new ground last Friday when they launched a Eu228.67m securitisation of apartment block rents, using one of the first UK-style secured loan structures in the French market. Vauban was set up by Vauban Foncier SA of Belgium in 1991, at the start of the French property market's slump, to buy city centre blocks across France, often from forced sellers.

Société Générale launched its first collateralised loan obligation this week, parcelling $2bn of loans to US corporates into three and five year soft bullet FRNs. "We are striving to rebalance our credit exposure to improve diversification and move into more profitable areas of business," said Gilles Piard, head of commercial banking for SG's banking and finance division. "We have executed several risk transfer transactions with credit derivatives on baskets of exposures, but the CLO allows us to reap similar benefits on a bigger scale - liberating regulatory capital and managing our loan portfolio more dynamically."

UK non-conforming mortgage lender Kensington Mortgage Co returned to the asset backed markets this week with a £150m deal lead managed by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Residential Mortgage Securities No 5 followed the innovative template Kensington established in June last year with RMS 4, by creating separate, tradable securities from every scrap of cashflow in the structure.

Fuji Bank launched the first securitisation of consumer loans by a Japanese bank this week, as Paribas and Fuji International Finance sold Eu230m of triple-A rated bonds in the Euromarkets. The transaction is one of the first to use Japan's new Perfection Law, enacted last autumn to allow true sales of assets regulated by the Ministry of Finance. The law could do much to ease securitisation for Japanese banks, which have so far struggled with the civil code requirement to notify obligors if assets are to be truly sold.

Last week's Learning Curve covered the fact that volatilities given by some data providers can not be taken at face value but have to be transformed to the required reference or accounting currency.

THE ASIAN Development Bank (ADB) launched its first major debt transaction of the year this week in an opportunistic bid to maximise recent spread contraction. ADB head of funding Peter Balon said that the main aim of the new $500m three year issue was to accelerate a tightening of spreads which has seen the bank's benchmark 2003 bond come down from 70bp over Treasuries at January 22, to a trading level of around 58bp yesterday (Thursday).

THE EXPORT-Import Bank of Japan led the return of the country's government guaranteed issuers to the international debt markets this week by launching $1bn of five year floating rate notes. Jexim's blow-out deal provided the first ray of light for Japan's beleaguered borrowers in months. The financial, economic and political weaknesses of Japan's credit led to a sharp repricing of Japanese government guaranteed issuers (JGGIs) throughout 1998, and culminated in the year end loss of the country's Aaa rating from Moody's.