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Barclays Bank is preparing to launch a £1bn securitisation of its Barclaycard credit card portfolio, Euroweek has learned. The deal will be the first European credit card securitisation of a size comparable with the largest US transactions, and the first for several years from a mainstream bank.

n Abbey National will launch its third mortgage securitisation, Holmes Funding 2, next week. Lead manager Salomon Smith Barney will publish red herrings today (Friday) for the £1bn deal. The floating rate deal will offer three triple-A tranches - Eu725m of amortising notes with a 2.9 year average life, and two five year soft bullets, worth £215m and Eu300m. Price talk is 21bp to 22bp over Euribor for the shorter piece, 27bp to 28bp over Libor for the sterling tranche and 26bp to 27bp over Euribor for the five year euro note.

US mortgage company Ocwen Financial Corp has sold its UK arm, Ocwen UK Ltd, to the subsidiary's management and a consortium of investors led by Royal Bank Development Capital for £77m. Ocwen UK is one of the largest non-conforming lenders in the UK, servicing over £700m of mortgages. The company was formed in April 1998 when Ocwen Financial acquired Cityscape Financial Corp, another US lender, which was in financial difficulties. Ocwen paid £25m to £30m for Cityscape's UK subsidiary, City Mortgage Corp.

Kensington Mortgage Co this week became the first UK non-conforming lender to securitise its assets in a foreign currency. Lead manager WestLB sold the senior tranche of Kensington's seventh mortgage securitisation entirely in euros, accessing new investors at an attractive cost of funds. "WestLB suggested a euro deal to us about a month ago, as a way to reach a different group of investors from our normal buyers in the sterling market," said Martin Finegold, chief executive of Kensington in London. "It was a nice idea and it worked. We are very satisfied with the pricing, which is similar after the swap to what a sterling deal would have cost us."

Komercní Banka of the Czech Republic announced this week that it had mandated ING Barings to advise on restructuring its Eu2.3bn non-performing loan portfolio. Securitisation is high on the list of potential solutions. The mandate is an explicit attempt to clean up the bank's balance sheet as an aid to privatisation - the government intends to sell much of the 49% stake it still holds in Komercní by the middle of next year.

The Italian treasury is expected to announce a timetable next week for the auction to appoint lead managers for its Eu4.1bn securitisation of delinquent social security contributions. In April the government appointed Banca IMI, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Warburg Dillon Read to structure the transaction, but the underwriting mandate will be offered separately.

Greenwich NatWest this week announced the launch of a Eu1.29bn securitisation of non-performing mortgages for Istituto Italiano di Credito Fondiario, the largest Italian securitisation so far. NatWest stated that Eu826m of senior and mezzanine notes and a Eu464m junior piece "were privately placed by and among a number of Italian banks." Italfondiario will use proceeds to refinance bonds issued at high coupons before the steep falls in Italian interest rates of the last few years.

Derivative exposures currently are calculated by marking the transaction to market, applying an "add-on" to reflect the outstanding duration of the derivative and the riskiness of the underlying asset, applying the credit risk weighting of the counterparty and then reducing this total by 50%.

Big, medium or small, Germany's companies are making increased use of the bond markets as the euro opens up a new world of investors and funding opportunities. From the jumbo bonds issued by Mannesmann to the small debuts by a handful of Mittelstand companies, the trend is clear and investment banks are engaged in a major marketing drive to persuade new corporate issuers to venture into the market.

The swift emergence of an equity culture in Germany has been one of the most remarkable phenomena in international capital markets in recent years. From being a backwater in terms of new equity issuance, Germany has quickly become Europe's busiest primary market - fuelled by the extraordinary growth of interest in the Neuer Markt for growth companies, and by the high level of restructuring activity among major corporations.

Led by the commercial banks, German financial institutions have generally accepted the need to pay a higher price for their international debt this year in return for access to a global and more diversified investor base.