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IN A NORMAL week in the Euroloan market, Air Liquide's £4.3bn senior debt facility backing its acquisition of 50% of British Oxygen Company would command bankers' attention outright. However, following Elf Acquitaine's bold counter bid for Totalfina, a move that involves a breathtaking Eu18bn of underwritten senior debt, Air Liquide's money raising efforts have been shunted into second place, in terms of lenders' interests.

LEAD ARRANGER and co-ordinator ANZ Investment Bank has closed oversubscribed and signed the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier project financing and the first LNG carrier financing, on any basis, in India. The deal is the $165m 10 year shipping facility for the Enron Mitsui OSK Lines LNG carrier. The transaction is also one of the fastest project financings in India - a notoriously slow market for project finance. ANZ was mandated for the deal last November, and had signed the loan agreement and brought in senior banks by February 12 this year.

n Bank of Boston came close this week to launching its second collateralised loan obligation, but postponed the $1bn transaction yesterday (Thursday) evening. A spokesperson for the bank told Euroweek that in the face of record issuance in the market in the middle and late part of this week, officials had decided that since the bank did not need the funding, it would be better to wait for a more opportune moment to bring the deal.

Spain's third largest savings bank, Caixa de Catalunya, issued its third securitisation this week - at Eu442m (Pta73.5bn), the deal is relatively large for the Spanish market, and was fully sold to investors. Caixa de Catalunya debuted in June 1998 with a Pta24bn mortgage backed transaction placed with international investors. The bank returned in October with Pta47.5bn of MBS, but although lead manager JP Morgan said at the time the issue attracted significant demand from domestic investors, most of the bonds were retained for use as repo collateral with the Bank of Spain, partly because the market was unfavourable.

Australia's Macquarie Bank this week announced its intention to develop a mortgage securitisation business in China. The bank has been active in China for over five years, and has been investing in housing development since 1996.

Goldman Sachs last Friday launched a Eu461.21m securitisation to refinance its purchase of a portfolio of vehicle and equipment loans, leases and hire purchase contracts from German leasing subsidiaries of ABN Amro, which has discontinued its small ticket leasing business in Germany. Goldman Sachs bought the assets in June and has now securitised the great majority of them.

Banque Nationale de Paris this week joined the small but growing club of banks to publicly execute synthetic collateralised loan obligations - the bank issued Eu180m of bonds conveying the bottom 11% layer of risk on Eu1.635bn of corporate credit exposure. JP Morgan pioneered the technique with its Bistro structure in December 1997 - since then the bulk of trades have been privately and anonymously placed, but last October UBS launched its Eisberg Finance leveraged CLO, and this year Deutsche Bank, Citibank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia have all issued bonds conveying risk on much larger asset portfolios.

Formal roadshows may begin next week for an upper tier 2 capital raising by the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS). Following new regulations issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) last December, the bank is hoping to account for up to 2% of its capital adequacy ratios in the form of tier 2 debt. Having officially appointed Morgan Stanley Dean Witter as rating adviser for alternative capital structures last week, the DBS is already said to have begun an informal premarketing process.

European investors in Australian mortgage backed securities were offered deals from two new originators in the last week - brought by two new bookrunners. Last Friday ABN Amro launched $500m of senior and junior MBS for its non-bank subsidiary, Australian Mortgage Securities Ltd - and this week Warburg Dillon Read priced $492m of senior bonds for Colonial State Bank.

Australia Austar's A$369m to A$423m IPO is believed to be at least ten times covered. The Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter-led deal is due to close and price over the weekend.

The Thai banking sector continued its rehabilitation this week with Industrial Finance Corporation of Thailand (IFCT) raising $175.85m despite sluggish local demand. In order not to breach the 49% foreign ownership limit, 51% of the new issue had to be sold to local institutions, although locally registered foreign owned institutions qualified as local buyers.

Kowloon Canton Railway Corporation (KCRC) emerged as Asia's newest and most promising borrower this week with the launch of its $1bn debut Eurobond. Ranking as the largest ever pure Eurobond from the region and the biggest single tranche offering from Hong Kong, the success of the 10 year transaction turned many of the region's traditional borrowing assumptions on their head.