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New recruits to the exciting world of MTNs have been announced this week. (Hasn't anyone warned them off yet?) Fergus at HSBC can't believe his luck as he's now wedged into his desk not only by Anne-marie but now also by Tammy Li, who's joined them from syndicate. And the Merrill desk has finally found a head. It's Anthony Everill, also a syndicate guy. And not to be out-done, Matt Pass at Greenwich NatWest is considering a new hire later in the year. And on the subject of charity cases, the annual MTN/ECP dinner in aid of SPARKS is planned for The Brewery in London on November 25. Jimmy Hill and Annabel Croft will be among the attractions but organisers Julia Ward and Louise Mason plan to keep things under control. But with the Thanksgiving holiday in the US the next day they'll have a job keeping people subdued. And judging from the performance of some dealers at the Nationwide party last week Julia and Louise will have to particularly watch out for the UK gang. Nationwide set sail for its annual cruise along the Thames. Some dealers took the meaning of cruise a little too metaphorically as they worked their way around the dance floor trying to impress members of the opposite sex. Fergus Kiely was supposed to be shmoozing clients but it seems as if a certain member of the HSBC treasury team distracted the lad. And both Matt Pass (again? - Leak thought Matt was supposed to be tucked up at home with a mug of cocoa and his teddy bear now the winter nights are upon us) and Frair Appleby-Walker of Barclays were seen strutting their stuff to the band. Nationwide don't seem too wild on spending excess cash on hiring big name international rock 'n' roll acts. Apparently the Rolling Stones were too busy so the boys from the building society approached Rob Ford on Barclay's FRN desk, who has a band called Light Alloy. We are told that this witty nomenclature is to hide the fact that they are nothing more than a Bryan Adams tribute band. This did not bother Friar. She was still swaying to the band's rhythm long after the boat had stopped moving. Continuing this nautical theme, congratulations go to Henry Nevstad who has taken Deutsche Bank's naff new ad campaign to heart. He and a select handful of dealers were invited to the Icelandic MTN bash, ahem, conference. After a few minutes of business the guys at Icelandic Investment Bank bundled the MTNers into jeeps and drove them at high speed across glaciers. Then, after being put into rafts and sent down white-water rapids, the final challenge was for the dealers to dive off a cliff. Performance obviously does lead to results because Henry, not to be outdone by Marianna Oakland - I work for JP Morgan - did the biggest jump. He was voted bravest dealer and brings home another trophy for Tiina to shine.

If there's a prize going for best reward for dealer performance, Thames Water would win it hands down. Last Tuesday the borrower decided to treat JP Morgan's Rupert Lewis and Deutsche's Tiina Lee to a tour of its sewerage works in Twickenham - one of the biggest in Europe. What did they do to deserve such special treatment? The whole day was spent in detailed examination of the how factory gathers, processes, and distributes crap. Tiina and Rupert are now experts in the field. (Surely the warning bells rang when the invitation told them to bring their own wellington boots.)

There's a definite freshers' fair atmosphere in the market. Deutsche has taken on grad trainee Ben Gilbert to replace Henry Nevstad and HSBC made room on its trading desk for new boy Sean Henderson. Maybe banks should offer the kind of support usually given to fresh-faced students: a rape alarm, cheap booze and a free bank account should do it. And ex-Lehman originator Julia Ward made her debut at Commerzbank, while Henry Nevstad is no doubt getting nervous about his first day at Dresdner on Monday morning. Abbey National's Alisdair McDougall, Caroline Dunham and the team have been partying. We hear dinner at The Ivy was followed by some unusual theatre. Did they go to Puppetry of the Penis, a West End show of highly flexible assets, reviewed in the press as "genital origami and full-frontal male nudity"? Hope there are no cock-ups. And Salomons has finally moved into its new office at Canary Wharf. MTN man Marc Falconer is already bemoaning the lack of decent grub and culture. The same fate awaits Matt Carter and Luca Favero, as DLJ will be joining CSFB at Canary Wharf in a few days.

Lietuvos Energija has added Hermis Finansai as a dealer, for litas notes only, to its $375 million global MTN programme. It is the first time Hermis Finansai has appeared on a Euro-MTN dealer panel. The programme has $20 million outstanding.

Citibank/SSSB has been mandated to lead the first international corporate Euroloan from Tunisia this year. The borrower is Société Tunisienne de I'Electricité et du Gaz (Steg). In 1999 just nine deals came out of the country, totalling some $1.3bn.

Oman The Bank Muscat will award the mandate for its $100m-$150m five year facility. A group including Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi is thought to be close to the mandate.

Speculation that NTL might merge with its main competitor Telewest Communications to form a group that could dominate the UK cable industry circulated this week. However, analysts said that should such a merger occur, it would be a highly complex deal. "The Dutch company UPC has seen its 25% stake in Telewest peak and then slump to record lows over the last year," said an analyst at a US investment bank.

The first half of Merrill Lynch's new Pfandbriefe and European covered bond origination team started work on Monday. Stephan Kaiser came from Commerzbank as a vice president and Gabriele Müller joins as a director at the beginning of January, from Hypovereinsbank. Merrill Lynch was involved in the Pfandbrief market at its start, acting for Bayerische Vereinsbank on its DM1.5bn January 2006 10 year bond. However, when the 1998 downturn came, Merrill slowed things down. Now it wants to re-enter the market.

* Christian Blanc, the former president of Air France and the Paris regional transport authority, RATP, has joined Merrill Lynch as chairman of Merrill Lynch France and vice chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe. David Jervis remains country manager for France in charge of day-to-day operations. Blanc will assist in strategy development and develop Merrill's relationships with companies and governments.

After almost a 10-year absence, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MSDW) has returned to Euro-CP following the unprecedented growth in the market in the last year. The US bank will be ready for its first transactions mid-Feb but already demand is filtering through. Gene O'Shea has been transferred from the USCP operation to run the desk in London. The move follows the return of Credit Suisse First Boston to the market in August, last year. And it heightens rumours that other banks are looking to get in on the act. It's hardly surprising when market outstandings grew by 40% in 1999 to almost $175 billion for that year. This is largely thanks to the introduction of the euro, the rapid formation of money market funds and the increasing number of corporate and asset backed issuers seeking short-term funding. Bob Bonafide, executive director, global head of continuously offered products group, MSDW, says: "After having benign growth for years, the Euro-CP market is now taking off. That's largely due to the euro. If it continues to grow dramatically there'll be new opportunities everyday. As a global leader in capital markets, we're convinced we'll be able to carve out market share." But it is an ambitious task to attempt to muscle-in on a market dominated by Barclays Capital, Citibank and Deutsche Bank. However, Deborah Loades, head of Euro-MTN and Euro-CP origination at MSDW, says the bank is ready to shake up the competition. She says: "MSDW was the leading EMTN dealer in 1999 for trades of less than one year demonstrating that we already have excellent access to the short-term investors in Europe."

Credit Suisse First Boston completed a Eu141m secondary offering for e-commerce software provider Intershop at the end of last week. The shares were priced at Eu73, showing a 2.7% discount to last Thursday's closing price of Eu75.02. They rose as high as Eu77 after the issue, but fell again to close yesterday (Thursday) at Eu71.3.