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Baltimore Technologies completed a £167m fundraising and sell-down by venture capital firms this week, despite the stock falling 13% on the day of placing, in what bankers described as a "struggle in the face of immense adversity". The total raised in the deal, which was lead managed by Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, was sharply down from the £200m plus expected last week and the £290m expected when the deal was announced in September. Bankers said the deal was 1.5 times covered.

Banco di Napoli has put a fresh foot forward in the international capital markets by signing a euro2 billion ($2.16 billion) Euro-MTN programme on Tuesday, October 19. One market participant says: "This is the last of the big important Italian banks to sign." The signing highlights the bank's return to international capital markets following its two public transactions earlier this year. It hopes that having a Euro-MTN programme in place will give it the chance to regenerate market interest in its name, as well as giving it efficient funding opportunities. The number of Italian borrowers to join the market this year stands at 12, following Banco di Napoli's signing. Seven of these are banks. And this is the fourth time that Merrill Lynch has been chosen by an Italian borrower to be programme arranger. Banco di Napoli is the eighth largest bank in Italy with consolidated assets of L63 trillion ($35.18 billion). Its network of 731 branches, mostly in southern regions, is one of the largest in the country. The bank has almost 20% of the southern Italian banking market. The dealer group is made up of Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse First Boston, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Paribas, Warburg Dillon Read and the issuer itself. The programme is rated Baa1 by Moody's and triple-B by Standard & Poor's for its senior unsecured debt.

Bladex has added Barclays Capital, HSBC and Nomura as dealers off its $2.25 billion Euro-MTN facility. The programme, signed in 1994, now has a 20-strong dealer panel.

BNP Paribas has released further details about its internet platform for Euro-MTNs, MTNMaster. The system was announced last week at the global medium term note market conference. And Daniel Cogoi, BNP Paribas' head of Euro-MTNs, is confident the site improves on UBS Warburg's system, which is its only rival in the market. "MTNMaster puts the whole cycle of buying an MTN, from A to Z, online," he says. Investors can type in exactly what sort of trade they are looking for in the Project Monitor section of the site. The system then informs all issuers that are looking to launch a similar trade. But though MTNMaster can match issuers and investors, even for structured trades, the telephone will remain central to trading. "We feel issuers are not yet ready to go for a full trading system," says Cogoi. He admits that the most important short-term benefits of the site are that links between the MTN desk and the sales team will be much improved. His priority is to get the sales team onto the system before persuading investors to register.