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* Roadshows for the Euromarket debut from Russian power company Mosenergo via Salomon Brothers were completed this week, and the issue should be launched late next week. Positive feedback from investor presentations in Europe and the US should allow Mosenergo's inaugural debt offering to emerge at the top of the $150m-$200m indicative range.

THE SHAKE UP in the investment banking industry continued this week when Travelers Group, the financial conglomerate which owns US brokerage Smith Barney, announced that it is to acquire Salomon Inc for $9bn. As part of the deal, Smith Barney will merge with Salomon Brothers to form a new company, Salomon Smith Barney. The aim of the merger will be to combine Smith Barney's domestic strength in equities, asset management, municipal finance and retail distribution with Salomon's strength in the international fixed income markets.

Finland The well supported $350m seven year multicurrency revolving credit being arranged for Nokia Oy by Chase Investment Bank, Citibank NA and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell was signed on September 12 in Helsinki.

SWEDISH Export Credit (SEK) this week became the first foreign issuer to launch a Lithuanian litas denominated transaction. This week's offering is SEK's second in a Baltic currency -- in October last year it tapped the Estonian kroon market under the lead of Finland's Postipankki with a Ek60m three year offering.

* L-Finance Guarantor: L-Bank

* European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Rating: Aaa/AAA

Asset-backed securities * BA Credit Card Corp Ltd Cayman Islands Series 1997-1

THE AUSTRALIAN government's offering of shares in Telstra, its national telecoms operator, is proving very successful with domestic retail investors and institutions at home and abroad ahead of the announcement of an indicated price range early next week. Approximately 2.3m retail investors pre-registered for the offering.

* CSFB's securitisation of its corporate loan book, which is due to start roadshowing on October 6, will be a credit-linked notes structure, with at least one significant diffference from SBC Warburg Dillon Read's pioneering Glacier Funding transaction, completed earlier this month. * NatWest's second securitisation of corporate loans, via Rose Funding II, may be launched as early as next week. Few details are known, other than that it will closely follow the template of the $5bn Rose I.

NOMURA is set to continue its remarkable string of securitisations with the parcelling up of cashflows from UK public houses. No details are yet available, but the financings may be in two separate stages. The first securitisation will likely be a refinancing of a November 1995 bond which parcelled up cashflows from the Phoenix Inns estate. The second transaction looks set to be a securitisation of part of a pub estate the bank announced it was buying this week.

Societe Générale has brought the first tranche of a trail-blazing securitisation of local government subsidies for five universities in the Spanish autonomous community of Valencia. Apart from offering a possible template for future university revenue backed securities across Europe, the deal offers the first peseta paper at 25 years, in a market where the longest government bond is 15 years. The triple-A guarantee from MBIA-AMBAC International is also the first use of a monoline wrap in the Spanish primary market.

WESTPAC has launched a $517m mortgage-backed security, its first international securitisation and only the second to emerge from Australia. Some critics said the bond was too aggressively priced and a number of well-known accounts declined to participate, but most market players agreed with the lead managers that the deal proved a successful debut.