Search results for

ABN Amro this week several appointments that will made boost its global fixed income sales effort. Chris Lillingston-Price will be European head of Libor product sales in London, and report to Edward Wassink, European head of sales. He joins in mid-July.

South Africa The $1bn three year term loan for South African Reserve Bank has closed with a strong oversubscription of around $1.75bn. The facility should be signed at the end of June.

Hong Kong Hong Kong International Theme Parks, the company set up for the Disneyland project, has shortlisted six banks for is upcoming Hong Kong dollar funding requirement.

Union DE Créditos Immobiliarios, the Spanish mortgage lender owned by Banco Santander Central Hispano and BNP Paribas, returned to the MBS market this week with a Eu459m deal, lead managed, as ever, by its shareholders. The year's third Spanish mortgage deal priced towards the high end of MBS spreads, with a coupon of 29.5bp over three month Euribor for the triple-A tranche, which has a 6.2 year average life.

The UK government's Private Finance Initiative took a significant leap forward this week as Deutsche Bank placed the largest PFI bond so far to finance construction of a new building for the country's main electronic spying installation, the Government Communications Head-quarters, in Cheltenham. The £406.85m bond was issued by Integrated Accommodation Services plc (IAS), a consortium that has a contract to demolish two buildings, build a new one and service it until 2029.

Two Australian mortgage lenders made their international securitisation debuts this week, taking different routes to achieve the same end of oversubscribed deals with broad distribution. Adelaide Bank offered the first Australian MBS under Rule 144A, selling $725.6m of triple-A bonds through ABN Amro, which had arranged the deal, and Credit Suisse First Boston, which ABN raised from a syndicate role to joint bookrunner, to strengthen US placement.

JP Morgan last Friday priced a $300m CBO for Dutch asset manager Robeco - the first CBO backed primarily by US high yield bonds to be managed by a European firm. Robeco is 50% owned by Rabobank, which has an option to acquire the rest of the equity. "Robeco has a long track record in Europe but wants to raise its profile as an asset manager for high yield," said Nick Morgan, head of structured finance syndicate at JP Morgan in London. "The company wants to quadruple its assets under management in the next three years, and doing CBOs is part of that effort."

Ireland's largest mortgage lender, the Bank of Ireland, launched its first securitisation of Irish mortgages this week through UBS Warburg, meeting an enthusiastic response from investors hungry for European mortgage product. The Eu500m transaction, Liberator Securities No 1 plc, is the first large euro denominated MBS issue for nearly a month, at a time of year that is usually considered a useful window for issuance.

Crédit Agricole Indosuez and EBN Banco this week launched their second Spanish collateralised loan obligation backed by loans to small businesses extended by banks under a government subsidised programme. Like the inaugural transaction in March (see EW642), the deal pools loans from several domestic banks and is partially guaranteed by the Kingdom of Spain.

WITH the Asian crisis behind it, but its southeast Asian neighbours still in economic trouble, Singapore sees its future as a financial centre in the region second only to Japan. And driving the republic's bid is the government.

ONE global investment bank has been especially successful in Singapore in recent times. Salomon Smith Barney has picked up the biggest share of international equity capital market deals from the Lion City since 1999.

Singapore has delivered international investors two of the most exciting equity issues to emerge from Asia this year. Prospects look good for the year ahead as a spate of privatisation issues is set to emerge as well as plenty of IPOs by local and foreign companies. Leading Singapore companies are also expanding overseas through acquisition and are becoming more diversified in their ability to access global capital. International securities firms have been building their operations in Singapore to win new issue mandates and tap into the growing number of asset management companies setting up in the island republic. Mark B. Johnson reports.