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* Warburg Dillon Read this week launched an A$160m domestic mortgage backed issue for Bank of Queensland. REDS Trust Series 1999-1 offers A$155.6m of bonds rated AAA by Standard & Poor's with a three year average life, and A$4.4m of subordinated notes rated AA- with a 5.3 year average life. The pricing ranges are 36bp to 38bp over the one month bank bills swap rate and 75bp area.

PARIBAS this week brought a Eu321m securitisation of French consumer loans originated by Cetelem, a subsidiary of Paribas Retail Financial Services. MasterNoria 1999-1 is the second issue from the first French master trust structure, which allows multiple issues of bonds to share a single pool of collateral. The structure saves on transaction costs, and allows risk and gain to be shared across all transactions issued under the programme. There is a single reserve fund to gather excess spread -- conversely, should the assets underperform beyond a certain trigger, all deals will amortise early.

AUSTRALIAN non-bank mortgage lender RAMS Home Loans Pty Ltd returned to the Euromarkets this week with a $500m securitisation, lead managed by JP Morgan. RAMS made its international debut last September with a $400m deal just after the Russian default. JP Morgan had to reduce the issue from $450m, but still managed to price the senior bonds at 14bp and 17bp over three month Libor with average lives of 2.7 and 5.3 years.

BILBAO Bizkaia Kutxa, Spain's third largest savings bank, issued its first securitisation this week -- with a Eu150.2m mortgage backed deal structured by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. At the equivalent of Pta25bn, the transaction is on the small side for the Spanish market, and BBK already has a return on equity of 20.4%, more than 4% higher than the average for the savings bank sector.

SOFINLOC, a subsidiary of Banco Finantia, this week launched the second term securitisation from Portugal, parcelling car loans, leases and long term rental contracts into Eu213.1m of bonds lead managed by Deutsche Bank. Deutsche opened the market last July with a DM435.1m consumer loan deal for Banco Comercial Português.

Last week's Learning Curve covered "functional Greeks" for instruments valued using interest rate models with curve- and surface-valued parameters.

THE PHILIPPINE Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) posed a new test of investor tolerance for Asia's leading corporate credits this week with the launch of the company's first public bond offering in two years. Long regarded as the region's benchmark emerging market borrower, the high spread paid by the Ba2/BB+ rated PLDT for its deal on a historical basis elicited a mixed response from market players.

THE FINAL step towards a full recovery in the Latin new issue market arrived this week when Multicanal, the Argentine cable TV company, became the first sub-investment grade Latin corporate to issue unguaranteed US dollar denominated bonds. The 10 year/put five deal, led by CSFB and BankBoston (joint books) was originally launched at $100m, but demand was such that it was increased to $175m and still traded up to 101.75 from a fixed reoffer price of 99.553.

THE FORTHCOMING global bond offering by the Korea Development Bank (KDB) has been well received by investors in Asia and Europe as presentations move across to their final leg in the US. With pricing scheduled for next Thursday, the full syndicate of around 10 banks will be made public by lead managers JP Morgan and Chase Manhattan on Monday. Bankers said that price and maturity guidance for the roughly $1bn deal will also be released at the same time, with details deliberately kept vague at the start of the roadshow programme.

HITACHI Leasing Co, the oldest leasing company in Japan affiliated to a manufacturer, became the newest entrant to the country's asset backed market this week, with a ¥34.5bn domestic deal lead managed by IBJ Securities. HL Asset Funding Corp Series 1 is backed by some 2,335 equipment leases extended to 786 Japanese companies, worth a total of ¥41bn. IBJ split the senior portion, rated Aaa by Moody's, into 10 hard bullet tranches, maturing every six months from October 1999 to April 2004. (See bonds section for full details.)

TOKYO Sowa Bank has postponed the ¥30bn bond that was to have been the first securitisation of Japanese residential mortgages. Bear Stearns had begun marketing the deal in February, but was unable to place all the bonds before investors started to close their books for the financial year end on March 31.

ABN AMRO and Merrill Lynch will launch a $130m convertible bond for China Merchants Holdings as early as next week to fund the red chip's recent acquisitions on the mainland. The five year issue has been extensively pre-marketed this week with talk of a coupon range of 6% to 7% and a conversion premium range of between 10% and 20%. There will be a three year hard no call provision on the deal, for which a size range of between $100m and $200m has been mooted at various points during the week.