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What a sad end for the greatest name in banking. One minute JP Morgan was full of swagger and bravado. The next the bank had rolled over on its back, run up the white flag and thrown in the towel. Even worse was the news that the once patrician House of Morgan had surrendered to the uncouth barbarians of Chase Manhattan. Of course, no one has been fooled by JP Morgan for a long time. Writers, including ourselves, who are allowed to speak their own minds, blew Morgan's cover ages ago. We have not been invited to lunch at Morgan for years just because we said the bank was the most boring in the industry. How right we were. However, we did not just stop there. Morgan folk were outraged when we continued to criticise the effectiveness of the bank. Time after time we argued that the whole business strategy was cock-eyed and that Morgan, without some inspired acquisitions was digging itself into a deep hole.

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria this week launched its third cedulas hipotecarias issue, only the second internationally targeted Spanish mortgage bond of the year and the bank's first since it was formed from the merger of BBV and Argentaria. The transaction was led by a pan-European lead management group: Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Barclays Capital, CAI, Commerzbank, SG, and UBS Warburg.

UK-Irish encryption software provider Baltimore Technologies announced yesterday (Thursday) a £703m acquisition of scanning technology provider Content Technologies. The purchase will mean placing £249m ($352m) of Baltimore stock in the market, and the company has appointed Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch to manage the issue.

Chase Manhattan, Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney priced the £622.75m secondary offer for London listed mining group Billiton yesterday (Thursday) overcoming investor fears surrounding a recent acquisition. Books closed twice covered with UK accounts dominating orders. A total of 210m shares were sold at 265p from a closing price of 273.75p. There is a greenshoe of 25m new shares.

Fears concerning the avalanche of European telecom supply coming to the dollar market subsided yesterday after investors stampeded into Telefónica's blow-out $6bn equivalent transaction. The offering attracted more than 500 investors worldwide and was increased by $1bn after lead managers Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter built a dollar book close to $16bn and a euro book of about Eu4bn.

BMW has increased the limit off its euro1.5 billion ($1.29 billion) multi-currency CP programme to euro5 billion. The programme is arranged by Deutsche Bank and is one of 39 CP programmes signed by German corporates.

Brazil's BNDES made a strong return to the dollar markets this week with a blowout $400m five year deal, the first Latin American development bank or agency since 1994 to issue a plain vanilla bond in the international dollar market. The 144A Reg S transaction, led by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Salomon Smith Barney, was increased from $300m, carried an 11.25% coupon and was priced to yield 11.505% or 556.7bp over Treasuries.