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LEAD MANAGER Commerzbank this week braved earlier choppy market conditions to raise DM1.2bn for the diversified German steel producer, Thyssen. The firm sold 3m ordinary shares in an international offer which was priced early this week at DM400 against a close of DM408. In the week preceding the pricing considerable weakness in the US market had spread to continental Europe.

THE Republic of Turkey enjoyed a blow-out reception for its $600m 10 year Euro/144A offering this week, confounding the predictions of some market participants that the B1/B rated sovereign would struggle to attract a strong US investor bid for its paper. At $600m the transaction was the country's largest ever dollar issue and at 10 years its longest dated international bond since it lost its investment grade status in 1994.

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BRAZILIAN bank Unibanco scored in lire this week while other Latin new issues snored in a dollar market worn out by $7.2bn worth of 30 year global bonds recently issued by Pemex, Venezuela and Argentina. Italian and other European investors snapped up Unibanco's offering of Lit175bn of six year Eurobonds with an attractive 10% coupon for the first two years and stepping down to 7% thereafter.

* DePfa Bank Europe Guarantor: Keepwell agreement from DePfa Bank AG

THE FRENCH real estate sector and the growth of securitisation continued to march hand-in-hand this week as Société Générale unveiled a new funding structure for French real estate lender Comptoir des Entrepreneurs.

SAKURA Bank has set up a unique partnership with Japan's biggest property developer, Mitsui Real Estate, to recover some of its delinquent commercial real estate loans using securitisation. A special purpose company, Reif Ltd, sold ¥10bn of five year bullet Eurobonds on Wednesday. The transaction was rated AA- by Nippon Investors Service, and broke down into 70% of fixed rate paper and 30% floating. The deal was privately placed with sophisticated European and Japanese investors after about two months of marketing.

FORD Motor Credit Company this week launched a DM1bn asset backed FRN via JP Morgan -- successfully inaugurating Globaldrive, its tailor made international securitisation vehicle. In preparation since the start of the year, the newly unveiled programme is the first of its kind in Europe, enabling the company to securitise a range of assets from a variety of jurisdictions.

WESTPAC will early next week launch a $517m securitisation of Australian residential mortgages in its first venture into international asset-backed markets. Launched via special purpose vehicle Westpac Securitisation Trust Series 1997-4E, the issue will be piloted by JP Morgan (books), and SBC Warburg and Morgan Stanley/Westpac as co-leads.

BANK OF Tokyo-Mitsubishi executed its second CLO this year with an array of Eurobonds in four currencies, totalling $1.7bn. The bank aimed to follow its pilot Wizard Finance transaction, which blew out in June, with a large liquid deal which would become the benchmark for Japanese loan securitisations.

CRÉDIT Lyonnais will launch Cyber-Val 09-97 next week, running the books jointly with Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan. The Ffr40bn transaction will equal the record achieved by the first Cyber-Val deal in July 1996, which was the largest ever non-government bond. Crédit Lyonnais delayed announcing the mandate by about two weeks as it waited for Germany's Bundesaufsichtsamt fur das Kreditwesen to accord the deal a risk weighting. This week the bank could wait no longer, though it still hopes the regulator will reach a decision before the launch.