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Edward Crook has joined Salomon Smith Barney in New York where he will be a senior member of the bank's acquisition finance group and responsible for the high yield and leveraged loans business for the firm's financial sponsor clients. At Salomon, Crook will work with Chad Leat, head of the loans division, and Steve Jones, who is in charge of the high yield business. Crook joins from Merrill Lynch where he worked in the high yield and leveraged loan group for three years. His main focus was on the financial sponsor business in the US and Europe, working on deals such as the LBO of HMV that was arranged by Merrill and Warburg Dillon Read.

DEUTSCHE Bank has completed the set up of its global loans team after its merger with BT Alex Brown officially took place last week. In New York, Kevin Sullivan takes over as managing director and head of loans, responsible to North American and Latin American business. He was previously managing director and head of loans at BT Alex Brown in New York. W Jefferson Stuart, managing director and head of US loans at the old Deutsche Bank will report to Sullivan.

Deutsche Bank is on the verge of launching its first leveraged, synthetic collateralised loan obligation, to reduce regulatory capital held against loans to high quality corporates in the US, UK and Canada. The deal will reference 330 assets on Deutsche's balance sheet, worth $5bn - the bank will transfer the most senior tranche of risk through a credit default swap, while another such swap lays off the junior element to a special purpose vehicle, Blue Stripe.

UK catalogue retailer Great Universal Stores this week executed a £380m auto loan securitisation, as the second stage of a plan foreshadowed in February 1998 when the company bought its rival Argos for £1.67bn. "We put in a £1.6bn short term facility to finance the acquisition, and it was always our intention to refinance it at longer maturities," said David Bury, group treasurer and commercial director of GUS in London. "We have now refinanced half of it, and are talking to both the major rating agencies about an unsecured rating, with a view to accessing the European or American bond markets."

UK centralised lender The Paragon Group of Companies, the most prolific asset backed issuer in Europe over the last 13 years, this week inaugurated a revamped securitisation programme, designed to enhance its appeal to investors and shake off the last vestiges of association with the underwriting and delinquency problems that dogged the company in the early 1990s housing recession. JP Morgan lead managed a £185m mortgage deal, Paragon Mortgages No 1 Plc, that introduces a new asset specific branding for Paragon's deals. For the last two years the company has securitised mortgages, car loans and consumer loans through its Finance for People programme.

Westdeutsche Landesbank last Friday underwrote a Eu194m securitisation of hard currency revenues for Türkiye Halk Bankasi, and has begun syndicating the deal in the loan market. "We considered the bond market, but there is a huge pipeline of Turkish securitisations, which banks are finding difficult to sell," said Ulrich Kastner, a transactor in WestLB's asset backed and principal finance group in London.

Cabot Financial (Europe) Ltd, the UK based company that buys distressed consumer debt, this week closed its sixth and largest acquisition of charged off credit card debt. CFE bought a portfolio with a face value of £50m from a UK bank that is a leading credit card originator. The deal takes the total face value of CFE's assets to £85m - and the company has also recently concluded its first long term purchase agreement, under which it commits to buy from another bank a given amount of charged off credit card debt every month for a year.

The European Investment Bank this week took part in a securitisation for only the second time, funding the senior tranche of a Eu232m deal for Banca Italease, the leasing bank owned by over 30 of Italy's banche popolari. Like Italease's three previous securitisations, Iris No 4 was arranged by Paribas and Finanziaria Internazionale, the bank's securitisation partner in Italy.

Structured finance boutique Fredell & Co this week unveiled a new securitisation programme that will provide finance for Swedish residential property companies. The programme will ultimately be financed in the term ABS markets, but while it builds up collateral for each deal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce will provide senior finance through its D-1/P-1 rated conduit Great Lakes Funding Capital Corp, while Lehman Brothers warehouses the junior tranches.

SANWA Bank opened a new era in Japanese banking last Friday, with the country's first securitisation of residential mortgages. The Japanese mortgage market is huge - at ¥169tr ($1.46tr), by far the largest outside the US - and enthusiasts for securitisation are eagerly looking forward to the development of a thriving mortgage backed securities market.

NOMURA launched two Japanese transactions to international investors this week. Kyoden raised Sfr50m in the convertible market while Saizeriya plans to complete a ¥25.6bn equity raising by the end of next week. Nomura's two previous Swiss franc convertibles set the backdrop for Kyoden, both having traded well.