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Goldman Sachs is to act as global co-ordinator for one of the largest and most eagerly awaited US IPOs in recent years - the $3.45bn flotation of cable group Charter Communications. St Louis-based Charter, owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is to float in the third quarter of the year in what will be the largest US IPO after the $3.96bn float of oil group Conoco last October.

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BA ASIA has launched a further refinancing for a Chinese state company this year. The deal is a $200m 364 day L/C facility for COFCO Capital Corp, the window company for China National Cereals, Oils & Foodstuffs Import & Export Corp, which is providing a guarantee. BA Asia has attempted to dampen the negative sentiment displayed towards China credits by offering a massive hike in pricing from the deal completed in 1998.

Just when bond markets were beginning to recover from the swap and credit spread widening inspired by Fed chairman Greenspan's comments last week, US employment cost index data yesterday (Thursday) showing a tightening labour market halted the improvement. The higher than expected rise in the ECI is the kind of news market participants fear might prompt an imminent rate tightening in the US. Such renewed uncertainty spooked government bond markets.

Investors are eagerly awaiting a large number of European hi-tech flotations through listings on Germany's Neuer Markt and other second-tier markets such as France's Nouveau Marché and Italy's Nuovo Mercato. Exchanges in other European markets are keen to emulate the success of Germany's Neuer Markt - where new issues have raised more than Eu2.5bn this year, with a further Eu2bn to Eu3bn still to come.

IKB Deutsche Industriebank this week established a Eu5bn debt issuance programme to expand its funding sources away from the domestic markets it has relied on in the past. Arranged by Merrill Lynch, the programme will be signed today (Friday).

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Bankers' emotions were mixed yesterday afternoon (Thursday) after leaving the sub-underwriters' meeting in Paris for Elf Acquitaine's Eu18bn committed credit facility backing its counter bid for Totalfina. They had just been introduced to the deal's full fee and margin structure after one week of intense speculation during which arrangers and bookrunners Banque Nationale de Paris, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Crédit Agricole Indosuez had given little detail away. Speculation had bred fear that the margins and fees were going to be too tight for the Eu1bn commitment required to bag a senior role in the deal.

Dollar swap spreads began the week trading at 100bp over the 10 year Treasury - an historic high. On Tuesday, they retraced some ground and traded down to 95bp, but by Wednesday the widening had started again. Considerable paying by a number of investment banks, led by Goldman Sachs, according to dealers, drove swap spreads higher again. By the end of the week, the 10 year market was quoted at 98.25bp-98.75bp. Dollar swaps have held on to these all-time highs for longer than was the case in the financial market crises of August last year.

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