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FANNIE MAE took the international bond markets by storm once again this week when it launched the second issue from its benchmark note programme. Already the triple-A rated US agency's strategy of issuing highly liquid deals appears to be paying dividends in terms of the pricing it can achieve.

FANNIE MAE took the international bond markets by storm once again this week when it launched the second issue from its benchmark note programme. Already the triple-A rated US agency's strategy of issuing highly liquid deals appears to be paying dividends in terms of the pricing it can achieve. The $4bn 10 year deal, led by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, was judged an equal success to the similarly sized five year deal which kicked off Fannie Mae's programme in early January.

TO HOWLS of disapproval, the Polish government this week awarded the keenly sought mandate to lead manage the flotation of Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA) to a consortium of Schroders and Powszechny Bank Kredytowy. Rival investment bankers faulted the process in which the Poles had decided the mandate, claiming that they had been subjected to too many requests for unorthodox underwriting agreements. They also criticised the government for being too inflexible about the structure of the forthcoming deal. Some put forward obscure political reasons for Schroders' success.

* BBV International Finance Ltd

GLOBAL CO-ORDINATOR HSBC this week successfully completed the sale of its £400m convertible bond issue for National Grid, the UK electricity company. After marketing the stock to investors over the past few weeks, HSBC formally opened the book for the deal on Monday. The offer period was to have lasted five days, but the lead manager was able to close the orderbook early when it was already several times oversubscribed by high quality accounts.

THE US stockmarket rallied at the beginning of this week with the Dow Jones recording gains of nearly 250 points earlier on. Towards the middle of the week, however, the index fell about 30 points and continued to slip slightly yesterday (Thursday). With the earnings season looming, corporate results have been at the front of investors' minds. Although around 40% of companies have beaten analysts' estimates -- technology stocks have recorded some excellent quarterly results -- some larger companies, such as General Motors, have showed only average growth. The mediocre performance of such blue chips has dampened investor enthusiasm.

LEAD managers Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and Creditanstalt are gearing up to launch what will be the third -- and first largely domestically targeted -- offering of shares in Hungarian oil company Mol. The two firms led the company's flotation in 1995, when shares were sold at Huf1,100, and also the second international offering last year when shares were sold on at Huf2,970 ($16-1/2).

India

* Abbey National Treasury Services

ITALY IS set to scrap the widely disliked queuing system for emerging market issuers in a move it hopes will bring greater flexibility and efficiency to the emerging market sector of the Eurolira market. Strong Italian demand for emerging market credits has attracted many Latin American borrowers to the lira market over the past few years and the current queuing system -- which allows only three borrowers to issue per month -- has resulted in a back log of issues stretching to June.