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Arrangers Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Warburg Dillon Read watched with disappointment as US energy group TXU Corp pulled back from its bid for Spain's Hidroeléctrica del Cantabrico, making the Eu3bn loan they had been preparing unnecessary. But a possible loan financing was being spoken about this week for the second bidder - Unión Fenosa.

Telecom Italia (TI) has mandated BNP Paribas and WestLB to structure a securitisation programme backed by charges on its Italian telephone customers, and to underwrite the first issue from the vehicle. The lead managers declined to comment, but TI, the dominant provider of fixed line telephony in Italy, is believed to intend raising around Eu4bn from a repeat issuance securitisation vehicle that will likely parcel a range of assets. Market participants said the core element of collateral will be phone bills from private customers, but corporate bills may also be included, and other revenues such as equipment sales may be added if that proves feasible.

* Merrill Lynch sold £92.66m of Baltimore Technologies stock this week for US corporation GTE. The shares were payment to GTE for the purchase of GTE CyberTrust from Contel Federal Systems - a wholly owned subsidiary of GTE. The deal coincided with the announcement of a planned stock split for Baltimore which only last week entered the FTSE 100 index.

The $4bn financing for PowerGen was attracting a positive response in syndication this week. By yesterday evening (Thursday), the arrangers had not yet received any commitments, but neither had any of the invited banks declined, suggesting that the facility is heading for a strong result. Following a number of recent deals that were criticised for bringing in too many banks at the upper levels of syndication, the borrower was keen to restrict this round to a tight group of relationship lenders. The facility is certain to go out to general syndication afterwards.

* Abbey National Treasury Services plc Guarantor: Abbey National plc

As the first quarter of the year draws to a close, bond market participants will be hoping that the inauspicious dawn of the new millennium will soon be forgotten. Barely a week has passed this year without an event that has forced borrowers, banks and investors to revise their plans. The most disruptive force has been ever wider swap spreads - exactly the opposite movement to that many forecast at the beginning of the year.

France Banks have signed up to the £1.65bn deal for Thomson-CSF, backing its acquisition of Racal Electronics of the UK. The facility was popular and the oversubscription led to a 40% cut in final allocations.

* Bayerische Hypo-und Vereinsbank AG Rating: Aa3/A+/AA-

Co-ordinating arranger Citibank has launched the long awaited jumbo facility for Fortum, the Finnish power generator that is acquiring electricity plants from Sweden's Stora Enso. It is thought to be the biggest ever syndicated facility for a Finnish corporate. The Eu1.5bn facility has five arrangers. Citibank was first with the mandate and underwrote the whole deal. It now holds an underwriting stake of Eu500m, while the other four arrangers - Chase Manhattan, Deutsche Bank, MeritaNordbanken and SEB - have underwritten Eu250m each.

France Télécom this week raised over Eu5bn through a two tranche floating rate note in euros and dollars, taking advantage of spread widening and volatility in fixed rate markets to tap into a wave of demand for defensive instruments.

France Télécom this week raised over Eu5bn through a two tranche floating rate note in euros and dollars, taking advantage of spread widening and volatility in fixed rate markets to tap into a wave of demand for defensive instruments.

Goldman Sachs as sole lead bookrunner and BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole Indosuez as joint arrangers have launched one of Europe's largest leveraged financings to co-arrangers. The deal is the leveraged recapitalisation of the Elis Group, the successful French laundry company bought out in 1997 by BC Partners, the US equity sponsor. The recapitalisation involves the raising of $1bn of senior debt and $130m of subordinated debt and will enable BC Partners to take its shareholder loans out of the transaction.