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The Hungarian corporates market has picked up this week, with the emergence of two telecoms deals. RWE Telliance subsidiary Novacom has released details of a Huf5bn project financing. The deal is fully funded by Bank Austria Creditanstalt and Commerzbank. The borrower is a fast growing telecommunications company and the facility will provide the company with the funds necessary to roll out a high capacity alternative fixed line telecommunications network in Budapest. The loan, which will pay just under 100bp over Euribor, could go to syndication if Novacom needs a fund increase.

Mexico's Industrias Unidas was yesterday (Thursday) understood to be considering a delay to the launch of its $200m 10 year bond until next week. The company finished its roadshows this week and bookrunner Credit Suisse First Boston was due to price the offering today (Friday). Yesterday (Thursday), however, bankers were suggesting that this week's market volatility had made the company consider putting off pricing until conditions improved.

TTP Communications hopes the growth in mobile telecoms will spur interest in its £60m LSE IPO, which will launch on Monday with Chase Manhattan as the bookrunner. As a leading player in the intellectual property (IP) sector of the industry, managing director Tony Milburn told EuroWeek that TTP Communications will benefit from the move to third generation (3G) mobile phones and GPRS (a 'packet data' standard that is an intermediate step before 3G).

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German bakery Kamps' struggled to execute its Eu250m five year bond issue as planned on Wednesday, after joint bookrunners JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch priced the deal at the wide end of revised price talk, at a spread of 250bp over Euribor. The deal was scheduled for pricing last Friday (September 15), but price talk of 175bp-200bp over Euribor created insufficient demand and the indicated spread was widened to 237.5bp-250bp.

Royal KPN will next week launch its $3bn global bond via Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and UBS Warburg, but will not offer investors the protection offered by the rating sensitive coupons it included on its Eu6bn funding package in May. The new issue, including five, 10 and 30 year dollar tranches and a five year euro piece, will take advantage of the improved sentiment towards the telecoms sector since Telefónica's $6bn equivalent issue blew out last week, and of dollar investors' greater readiness to take on the undiluted credit risk of KPN.

Argentina Barclays Bank (Miami) and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria have been mandated to arrange a $150m two-year loan-style FRN for Banco Frances SA.

The Olympics has spurred on the usually slothful bunch of MTNers to more sporty activities. Last week saw Islandsbanki-FBA and Landsvirkjin put on their annual bash. Alas, Henry Nevstad, who stole the 1999 show by jumping into freezing rivers from high cliffs, could not make it this year. He was basking in his new-found wealth on a Greek island. But new boys Nabil Aboulzelof from Barclays and Garrath Fulford from Chase got a taste of the arctic fun laid on by Bill Symington and Ingvar Ragnarsson from FBA. Being driven at high speed across glaciers in very small vehicles reduced most of the dealers to whimpering wrecks. Ah, what they will do for a few basis points. The week also saw hearty goings on in Holland, with Dick Visser in charge of the Rabobank fun. Morgan Stanley's Frair Appleby-Walker and the usual sailing crowd were there while the landlubbers chose Rheinhyp's golf day in Dublin. Present were Klaus, from Morgan Stanley and Merrill's Dean 'the dog' Fogg, whose greatest moment this year was beating the Alpha/Beta boys over 18 holes. But one of the market's biggest Irish stars, K2's cuddly David Hartigan, has gone missing. He has left the Dresdner SPV, leaving Jim Gibbons in charge. Vicious rumours are circulating that Jon Saunders and him are to swap jobs. Also Bear Stearns has recruited Faye Mythen, from Abbey, to run its MTN trading.

The Lebanese republic launched a $450m three year hybrid fixed rate/floater transaction late yesterday afternoon (Thursday), and provided some consolation for the postponement of its first 20 year global offering a fortnight ago and Monday's downgrade by Standard&Poor's (S&P).

The Lebanese republic launched a $450m three year hybrid fixed rate/floater transaction late yesterday afternoon (Thursday), and provided some consolation for the postponement of its first 20 year global offering a fortnight ago and Monday's downgrade by Standard&Poor's (S&P).

The European loan market demonstrated its seemingly limitless capacity to absorb telecoms paper this week with the successful closure of the syndications of the Eu8bn facility for Telefónica and the Eu18bn facility for Deutsche Telekom. The combined deals took up some Eu26bn of bank capacity at a time when some institutions are concerned by over exposure in their portfolios to telco paper.

MBNA International Bank changed the habit of a lifetime this week by issuing the senior tranche of its latest securitisation of UK credit cards in euros and doubling its usual issuance size. The Eu725m 10 year fixed rate bond, designed to broaden MBNA's investor base outside the UK, was seen as a complete success. Some 25 institutions from across Europe participated in the tranche, some of which had never bought ABS before.