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Monte dei Paschi di Siena this week launched the largest ever Italian MBS issue with a Eu671m deal. JP Morgan and Monte dei Paschi were joint leads for what was also the Italian bank's first securitisation.

Goldman Sachs last Friday offered a Eu500m cashflow arbitrage collateralised debt obligation (CDO) with Barclays Capital acting as collateral manager on the portfolio of bonds and loans. The deal is the largest high yield cashflow CDO ever to come to market in Europe. It was originally marketed as a Eu400m deal, but following strong investor demand across all tranches it was increased to Eu500m.

The second Greek government securitisation was launched this week, with Ariadne SA, a Eu650m issue backed by receipts from four state lotteries. The deal follows on from the country's successful securitisation of deposits into a government bank, Tameio Parakathikon (the Consignment Deposits and Loans Fund or CDLF) and is the first European securitisation of lottery receivables. The bookrunners and arrangers were Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Schroder Salomon Smith Barney and UBS Warburg. Alpha Bank and Commercial Bank were joint leads.

Union de Crédit pour le Bétiment (UCB), the French lending institution that specialises in financing real estate, this week completed a Eu765m securitisation backed by residential mortgages. Lead managed by BNP Paribas, which owns 99.9% of UCB, the deal was issued through MasterDomos, a master trust type fund set up by BNP Paribas in November last year solely for the purpose of securitising mortgages.

* Deutsche Bank has successfully launched its sixth corporate loan securitisation with a Eu2.5bn issue. Cast 2000-2 used the same synthetic structure as the previous two small business loan deals offering four classes of notes beneath a Eu2.380bn super senior credit default swap.

French bank Crédit Lyonnais this week completed a synthetic collateralised loan obligation conveying the risk of Eu1.955bn of investment grade loans, mostly to French and other European corporates. Jointly managed by Crédit Lyonnais and Lehman Brothers the deal met an enthusiastic response from investors despite being launched during one of the busiest periods the market has seen for this type of deal. "We use securitisation to manage our capital base - both in terms of our regulatory and our economic capital," said an official at Crédit Lyonnais. "We achieved our capital relief objectives during what has been one of the largest supplies of synthetic CLO product the European market has seen. The deal went well in what were very difficult market conditions."

Few people in the financial world would claim to be able to predict the markets.

For a supposed future technology hub, Malaysia has a rather cautious stance on telecommunications – reflected in its attitudes towards 3G.

Financial advisor Allen Perkins Group is branching out in more ways than one. Asiamoney travelled to its leafy Kowloon Tong offices to lunch with group managing director, Elsa Pau.

It's all happening in Taiwan's telecoms sector. The ball started rolling with privatization of the former state monopoly, Chunghwa Telecom. Now the sector is reaching full tilt as old names and new entrants fight for sought-after licences and revenues.

There are some familiar names in our ninth best-managed companies poll – the greats of Asian business didn't get where they are for nothing, and they're certainly not about to relinquish their thrones now. But there are surprises too, and some sorry falls from grace. By Olivia Chow and Robert Law.

After China Mobile's successful secondary offering in October, you could be forgiven for thinking that telecoms stocks are back in fashion. But a look east, to Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom, provides a different picture. That painful listing is still not complete. Thirty three per cent of Taiwan's state-run fixed-line operator, one of the last government-owned telcos in Asia to be privatized, was scheduled to be sold off this year in four separate tranches: 15.24% to domestic retail investors, 2.75% to employees, 3% to local institutions and 12% to the ADR market. So far, less than 3% of the company's stock has found its way in to private hands with only the ADR issue yet to go.