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Telecoms loans specialists reported this week that France Télécom (FT) has stepped up its efforts to get the slow moving sale of the Eu4.693bn senior interim financing for MobilCom wrapped up before the end of the year. FT owns around 24% of the company, which won a 3G UMTS licence in Germany earlier this year. The debt supports the cost of the licence acquisition.

In many ways, the CDO market is a child of the 1988 Basle Accords. The market would never have grown so fast without the juicy regulatory arbitrage made possible by the current system of risk weightings.

The LANCE structure developed by Chase to transfer the equity risk of loan portfolios from its balance sheet has allowed the bank to put into practice its ambitions in economic capital management.

Many issuers have been complaining about the lack of long-dated funding available to them this year. But a structure for sterling borrowers suddenly arrived on the scene this summer: the retail price index-linked (RPI) note. It looks like being the perfect hedge for issuers with inflation-linked liabilities. And UK pension funds, with a lack of gilt supply, have been clamouring for the structure. However, issuers have been slow to embrace the RPI-linked note. Only 2.5% of sterling trades this year have been RPI-linked. And only nine issuers have accessed the sector, raising £

Norway Commerzbank (bookrunner) and SEB (documentation and facility agent) signed banks into the $70m five year term loan facility for Finansbanken. The deal closed oversubscribed but the borrower decided not to take an increase.

CAIUA Servicos de Eletricidade (Caiua) is due to sign a $300 million Euro-MTN programme next week. Unibanco Securities is the arranger and sole dealer. The first trade will be a $50 million plain vanilla note issued at the end of November. George Cals, financial superintendent at Caiua, says: "We are setting up the programme to modify our debt profile. We also have a domestic debentures programme, signed in May 2000. We hope to attract investors mainly in the US and Europe." The issuer has no plans to issue in yen, although the programme does allow it to do so. Moody's assigned the programme a B1 rating on November 1 - this is the Brazilian debt rating ceiling. It is the second Brazilian utility to sign an MTN programme following LIR Energy, which signed a $300 million Euro-MTN in August 2000.