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Argentina Banco General de Negocios (BGN) has mandated Barclays Bank (Miami) and Chase Securities to arrange a $100m USCP backup facility.

MATAV, the Hungarian telecoms operator, will launch an inaugural Huf10bn bond issue today (Friday) off its newly established Huf45bn bond programme. ABN Amro Magyar Bank, CAIB Ertekpapir, CIB Ertekpapir, Deutsche Bank, MKB Ertekpapir es Befektesi and OTP Ertekpapir will lead manage the offering, as well as the overall programme.

Bahrain Gulf International Bank has opted to take advantage of the strong market support for its $300m five year term loan and will sign it increased to $400m on Monday.

Lorraine Baldry has joined Morgan Stanley Dean Witter as a senior adviser in the European investment banking division in London. She will advise clients on property related technology and telecommunications initiatives. "My role is to liaise with different groups at Morgan Stanley that are pursuing a number of initiatives, and to capitalise on what they are doing,'" said Baldry.

* The Eu42m IPO of analytik jena opened on Monday, up 29% from its issue price, and rose all week to finish yesterday (Thursday) up 48%. The deal was priced at the top of the Eu20-Eu24 range, opened at Eu31 and closed yesterday at Eu35.4. analytik jena manufactures computers for use in bio-analysis. The HypoVereinsbank-led sale was 19.3 times oversubscribed, with 60% of the demand coming from retail investors. Of the final allocation, 36% went to retail. Institutions, primarily from Germany, Switzerland, the UK and France, received 64% of the deal.

* London Clearing House (LCH) has started a new service for clearing outright cash bond transactions. The service will be an addition to LCH RepoClear, its centralised clearing facility for the European inter-bank repo market. LCH offers services for the netting and clearing of cash and repo transactions in Belgian and German government bonds, and will add other European government securities in due course.

Egypt Hopes that the Arab Republic of Egypt would tap the international bond markets in the fourth quarter were hit this week by the news that Standard & Poor's has revised its outlook on Egypt to negative from stable. At the same time, it affirmed Egypt's foreign currency ratings at BBB-/A-3.

Finland ICL Invia decided to postpone its Eu136m-Eu160m IPO at the end of last week after a 8.5% fall in the Helsinki Stock Exchange. IT consultancies had a particularly hard week, with a number of listed consultancies announcing profit warnings.

Market report: Compiled by Glenn Blackley, RBC DS Global Markets, Australia Tel: +61 2 9373 0431

NEUER Markt entrant Nexus hopes to use the Eu60m-Eu70m it is expected to raise with its IPO to benefit from major changes in European healthcare. Across Europe, hospitals and clinics are treating patients more and more as healthcare consumers, meaning that efficiency and quality are becoming increasingly important. For Nexus, which provides IT systems solutions for hospitals, this means a growing market for its products.

Mandated lead arrangers Chase Manhattan and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter have launched the general syndication of the £2.5bn revolving credit for NTL, the cable operator that is buying the UK cable assets of Cable and Wireless. In the retail phase, two tickets have been offered - senior lead managers taking £35m for fees of 60bp and lead managers taking £20m for 50bp.

WHILE issuance volume in some of Europe's new markets appears to have calmed in recent weeks, Italy's Nuovo Mercato has kept up a steady stream of deals with TXT and CDC both closing substantially oversubscribed this week. TXT e-solutions closed a stunning 21 times oversubscribed yesterday (Thursday) raising Eu39.8m for the company, which creates software for retailing. The Banca IMI, Intermonte and Lehman Brothers-led deal met with particularly strong domestic demand, according to bankers.