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Australia Arrangers BA Australia, Citibank and Westpac have decided to hold their commitments in the A$500m bridging loan for the acquisition of BHP assets by Duke Energy until the bridge can be taken out by a longer term financing.

* WestLB has appointed Alan Kelsey as a managing director and global head of its transportation industry group. He will be responsible for managing WestLB Panmure's investment banking activities in this industry group. Kelsey was previously an executive director of National Express Group, where he was in charge of strategy and development.

Fritz Kropatscheck is to leave his post as global head of syndicated loans at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and move to Deutsche's offices in New York where he will head up North American corporate relationship banking for Deutsche. Kropatscheck, one of the Euroloan market's most respected and admired members, will leave on March 31. He is likely to be one of the most senior German bankers in Deutsche's New York offices.

Lehman Brothers has won the mandate to act as global co-ordinator for the flotation of stock in Software, the German enterprise systems software producer. The deal is one of the most prestigious high growth issues to emerge from this market this year. The US bank will run the books, with BHV leading the sale of stock to local investors and joint lead for the international tranche.

Royal Bank of Scotland has launched syndication of the debt facility backing Baxi's acquisition of Ocean Idroclima of Italy. A bank meeting was held on Monday to mark the launch at which a small number of banks attended. A total of $45m is being sold down with a margin of 80bp over Libor that ratchets down, based on a debt-to-Ebitda ratio.

Romania's state owned electricity authority Compania Nationala de Electricitate SA (Conel) this week secured overwhelming noteholder approval for amendments to the terms and conditions for dollar and yen debt issued by its predecessor company, Renel RA. The amendments, approved by close to 90% of investors, cover a $135m five year floating rate note and a ¥1.35bn three year fixed rate private placement launched by Renel via Merrill Lynch in February 1997 - to date the only Euromarket issue by a Romanian corporate.

Bronwyn Curtis, the chief economist at Nomura, has left the bank as a result of its previously announced shift in focus. Curtis, one of the City's most quoted economic commentators, is understood to have been unwilling to the take on the role Nomura had earmarked for her, in particular the punishing travelling schedule involved.

* Alliance Funding Corp launched its first securitisation of the year on Wednesday with a $525m issue wrapped by monoline insurer FGIC. Launched through Alliance Mortgage Loan Trust 1999-1, the transaction marked the return of this regular issuer to the market and was eagerly snapped up by investors.

PPM America, an asset management subsidiary of Prudential, this week launched a $653.8m collateralised bond obligation, offering investors a variety of forms in which to take exposure to high yield bonds. "There was huge interest from Europe in the senior tranches," said a syndicate official at sole manager CSFB. "We had 18 orders, and sold 80% of the triple-A into Europe, to banks, and some Libor funds. PPM is a very good manager, in size and performance, and we were heavily oversubscribed."

Compagnie Vauban, the French property company, and Greenwich NatWest broke new ground last Friday when they launched a Eu228.67m securitisation of apartment block rents, using one of the first UK-style secured loan structures in the French market. Vauban was set up by Vauban Foncier SA of Belgium in 1991, at the start of the French property market's slump, to buy city centre blocks across France, often from forced sellers.

Société Générale launched its first collateralised loan obligation this week, parcelling $2bn of loans to US corporates into three and five year soft bullet FRNs. "We are striving to rebalance our credit exposure to improve diversification and move into more profitable areas of business," said Gilles Piard, head of commercial banking for SG's banking and finance division. "We have executed several risk transfer transactions with credit derivatives on baskets of exposures, but the CLO allows us to reap similar benefits on a bigger scale - liberating regulatory capital and managing our loan portfolio more dynamically."

UK non-conforming mortgage lender Kensington Mortgage Co returned to the asset backed markets this week with a £150m deal lead managed by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Residential Mortgage Securities No 5 followed the innovative template Kensington established in June last year with RMS 4, by creating separate, tradable securities from every scrap of cashflow in the structure.