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CREDIT Suisse First Boston and Lehman Brothers are today (Friday) set to launch a £200m 25 year bond for CE Electric Funding Co, the highest UK holding company of regional electricity company Northern Electric. The deal will be guaranteed by triple-A rated monoline insurer Ambac and will pay 80bp over the 8% 2021 Gilt to its bullet maturity in 2022. It will be accompanied by a shorter dated, unwrapped Yankee bond arranged by the same joint bookrunner and for the same borrowing vehicle. "The roadshow in the US has produced some very positive signs, and we are building a book," said an official at one of the lead managers.

* Ford Credit Canada Guarantor: Ford Motor Credit

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MEDIOBANCA, GOLDMAN Sachs and Schroders defied market conditions this week to successfully complete the Lit4.9tr ($2.45bn) equity offering for Banca di Roma, Italy's second largest banking group. The deal comprised an offering of ordinary shares and the sale of exchangeable bonds, both of which were well oversubscribed. The deal established a core of institutional and retail investors for the bank at a time when fund managers are nervous about the long term.

* Banca di Roma Rating: A2/A (Moody's/IBCA)

* Kingdom of Denmark Rating: Aa1/AA+

* Albert Heijn Guarantor: Koninklijke Ahold

Croatia Union Bank of Switzerland is syndicating $30m of the DM35m and $50m facilities put in place by Société Générale and UBS to support pharmaceutical company Pliva's acquisition of a majority shareholding in the Polish pharmaceutical group Krakowskie Zaklady Farmaceutyczne (Polfa).

LEAD MANAGERS UBS and Erste Bank this week completed the largest ever IPO for an Austrian company, raising Asch7bn ($560m) in a global offering of 10.02m Erste Bank shares. Salesman said that the deal was a tough sell, reflecting poor market conditions and the slowdown in investor interest in the approach to Christmas.

THE ESTONIAN Compensation Fund (ECF) tapped the international bond markets for the first time this week, launching a DM30m two year floating rate note via Salomon Smith Barney. The transaction was priced to yield 110bp over three month Deutschmark Libor on an issue price of par. ECF bucked the trend of Estonian issuers fighting shy of bond issuance since the outbreak of spread volatility in emerging market debt at the end of October.

* Turkmenistan has become the second central Asian republic to secure an international credit rating. Moody's Investors Service awarded the country a B2 long term foreign currency rating this week. The decision ranks Turkmenistan two notches below its central Asian peer Kazakhstan, which Moody's rates Ba3 -- on a par with Pakistan and Peru, and one notch above Bulgaria.

* Crédit Local de France Rating: Aa1/AA+