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THE Portuguese government looks likely to move away from its traditional method of rotating lead managers for privatisation mandates, instead rewarding banks which have performed well in previous sales. Goldman Sachs looks likely to team up with ABN Amro Rothschild and BPI to lead the next sale of stock in Electricidade de Portugal (EdP) while Morgan Stanley and BFE looks front runners for the sale of a further stake in the national cement producer, Cimpor. These banks were involved in the companies' earlier sales.

INVESTORS in some of France's largest and best corporates will be offered new stock in capital increases in the next few weeks. The wave of activity demonstrates that the country's leading industrial groups, in common with their German counterparts, intend to make the most of the current bull market sweeping through continental exchanges. Household names such as Cap Gemini, Lafarge and Latecoere are all set to raise capital from existing investors, but the strength of the Paris market is also inspiring many other smaller cap groups to list shares and raise additional capital on the public markets.

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Denmark JP Morgan (co-ordinator) and Den Danske Bank (facility agent) will close general syndication of the $350m seven year multicurrency revolving credit for Tele Danmark early next week. Appetite has been strong from the borrower's core relationship banks and an oversubscription is likely. The final syndicate will be about 10 strong with Danish banks dominating the group.

SBC WARBURG Dillon Read took the UK stockmarket by surprise yesterday (Thursday) with one of the gutsiest block trades of recent months, a £763.8m purchase of stock in cellular phone company Orange. Last night the fate of the deal was hanging in the balance, with a stockmarket slide leaving the bank holding up to 50m of the 193m shares it had bought from British Aerospace,

THE supply of convertible paper continued to build this week, following last week's range of successful deals from high quality issuers. Institutional investors lapped up the opportunity to purchase plain vanilla deals as well as synthetics and exchangeables, and salesmen say that the reception given to these transactions should be more than enough to encourage other banks and corporates to issue more paper. Lead manager Nomura joined forces with co-lead ABN Amro Rothschild and co-manager Robert Fleming to launch a rare UK convertible, a £50m issue for bio-tech group, Scotia.

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LEAD managers Deutsche Morgan Grenfell and SBC Warburg Dillon Read received plaudits from their peers for their deal management skills this week as they successfully steered the Russian Federation's first Eurobond of 1998 away from potential disaster. Originally scheduled for launch on Monday, the DM1.25bn 9.375% seven year Euro/144A offering looked in jeopardy after Russian president Boris Yeltsin sacked his entire government in frustration at a lack of progress on economic reforms.

NATIONAL telecom operator, Telefónica, will bolster its equity capital through a Pta600bn ($3.87bn) rights issue in the largest call yet on existing shareholders for a corporate capital increase in the Spanish market. Bank BCH had already announced that it will increase its capital through a $1.1bn rights issue.

ARRANGERS Chase, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers have launched co-arranger syndication of the $10.9bn debt facilities supporting Texas Utilities' bid for the Energy Group. The fully underwritten financing is split between a £3.625bn non-recourse facility and a $5bn corporate facility.

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