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VIETNAM cleared the final hurdle in its attempts to return to the international debt markets yesterday (Thursday) when it issued three tranches of Brady bonds totalling $553m, two months later than planned. The response from the market was muted, however, because of the country's deteriorating credit standing. Moody's placed its Ba3 rating for the sovereign on review for a possible downgrade last month and bankers believe a cut is almost inevitable given Vietnam's lacklustre approach to economic reform over the past year. That was evidenced last October, when the IMF held back the final $176m tranche of its three year $530m package.

THE revival of the Hong Kong equity market will face its first big test today (Friday). Joint lead managers ABN Amro and Bear Stearns will price the $250m-$300m 'H' share IPO for Yanzhou Coal Mining (YCC) which they abruptly pulled last October when the Hong Kong market plunged.

GLOBAL co-ordinators Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston have launched the sale of stock in Telecom New Zealand in a global offering which could raise as much as NZ$3.5bn ($2bn). The leads filed a registration statement with the SEC yesterday (Thursday) as the stock has been traded in New York since the company's IPO in 1990. The deal will comprise the sale of 382.67m ordinary shares with a greenshoe option of just over 64m shares which will all be sold by Ameritech in the divestment of its 22% holding in the telecom operator.

THERE WAS strong international demand this week as Nomura opened the book for the equity offering for Aiful Corporation. Between 3m and 4m shares in the consumer finance company will be sold to foreign investors, and priced between March 23 and March 25 at a discount to the secondary market.

* PT Polysindo Eka Perkasa has emerged as one of the highest profile defaulters from Indonesia following the announcement this week that the company missed a $17m payment in commercial paper on February 27. Its failure to meet interest payments resulted in twin downgrades by Moody's and Standard & Poor's, with the former lowering the company from Caa1 to Caa3 and the latter from CCC to CCC-.

FURTHER details regarding the flotation of soon-to-be demutualised Australian life company and fund manager AMP are emerging ahead of its scheduled listing in late June. Sydney-based bankers said that the creation of an issue structure which encourages the maximum number of policyholders to sell their shares at a price acceptable to institutional investors has created difficulties.

CREDIT Suisse First Boston and Goldman Sachs this week led a $175m exchangeable issue for the parent of Beijing Enterprises Holdings, in the process re-opening the debate on the success of equity linked debt offerings for red chips. Although the Beijing Enterprises deal was oversubscribed with interest from equity and convertible accounts, investors were not as enthusiastic as they had been for other recent deals such as for Cosco Pacific and Shanghai Industrial Holdings (SIH).

THE ASIAN Development Bank (ADB) launched its second public bond offering of the year on Tuesday with a surprise Sfr300m issue via SBC Warburg Dillon Read. Having indicated that it will sharply increase its funding this year with ambitions to raise over $9bn, the triple-A rated supranational has used its Swiss franc transaction and an earlier Hong Kong dollar bond as the launch pad for its planned jumbo dollar financings, the first of which is tipped for April.

* De Nationale Investeringsbank Rating: Aa3/AA+

A LENGTHY period of preparation paid off for the World Bank this week when the founder of the global bond market launched its 14th and largest such transaction to date. The $4bn five year deal is the latest in a line of superliquid transactions launched this year as investors place a premium on liquidity -- and after exhaustive consultation with both investors and underwriters, the World Bank clearly gave the market what it wanted.

* European Investment Bank Rating: Aaa/AAA

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