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WELCOME Break Group, the UK's second largest operator of motorway service areas, is preparing to launch a tap of the ground breaking £321m securitisation that refinanced its LBO in August 1997. Bankers Trust, which lead managed Welcome Break Finance with BZW and Chase, roadshowed the £60m tap in London last Friday, and plans to price early in the week beginning October 19.

UBS LAUNCHED its Eisberg Finance leveraged collateralised loan obligation today (Thursday) at half the size it had originally planned, after marketing the double-B rated tranche for more than a month. Investors' flight to liquid, safe securities made the subordinated piece a difficult sale, and bookrunner Warburg Dillon Read made little progress in placing the tranche in the last two weeks.

* The European Union has amended its Solvency Directive, which governs bank regulation, to encourage central banks to risk weight some kinds of commercial mortgage backed securities at 50%. National regulators will be free to accord the weightings they wish, but the EU is keen to promote similar treatment across borders for securities with similar risk characteristics. The move follows resolution of a long running dispute between the Bank of England and Germany's Bundesaufsichtsamt für das Kreditwesen over risk weightings for MBS. On October 1 the BaK changed its 100% weighting for residential MBS to 50%, while the Bank of England will agree to grant 50% weightings to commercial MBS backed by German-style mortgages.

A commonly-asked question in financial modeling refers to the minimum number of stochastic factors that must be included in the model in order to properly capture the price and risk behavior of financial instruments.

China/Hong Kong Moody's has lowered Citic Pacific's long term credit rating from Baa1 to Baa2, citing its weakened financial position resulting from a "relatively high level of leverage, as well as the negative impact on its business performance of the sharply deteriorating operating environment in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the region."

ONE ISSUE preoccupied the minds of structured finance professionals in Japan this week -- the bankruptcy of Japan Leasing Corporation. Japan Leasing was the most prolific non-bank securitiser in Japan, completing four public international deals in the last two years, as well as several domestic transactions.

AFTER a three year wait, Cable & Wireless Optus has finally outlined the shape of its A$2.5bn capital raising, and while few bankers doubt its success a lengthy delay before the institutional bookbuild starts could leave the sale open to market risk. A total of 1,026.9m shares will be sold, with 375m new shares being sold by the company, 95m existing shares being sold by AMP and National Mutual and a further 556.9m existing shares offered by Mayne Nickless to its shareholders.

THE LAUNCH of the $300m World Bank guaranteed deal for the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) has been pushed back to next week, fuelling fears that one of the Asian bond market's last remaining lifelines may be about to be cut. Specialists said that failure to launch the deal earlier this week, taking advantage of a window of certainty, has left it a hostage to wider market volatility.

Australia National Australia Bank (NAB) has successfully completed its US retail-targeted preference share issue. Having been forced to reduce ambitions of raising up to $1bn, the bank nevertheless managed to exercise the greenshoe to a reduced $400m issue, bringing the overall transaction size up to $450m.

BANKERS connected to NTT DoCoMo's $15bn IPO have conceded that the float may be detrimental to the health of the Nikkei but despite a loss of over 800 points in the last five days most bankers believed the sale would be successfully completed. But with fund managers shying away from increased exposure to the Japanese market * and to almost all world markets * many would-be NTT DoCoMo buyers have had to sell existing Japanese stock to purchase what many consider to be a likely outperformer of the index.

ARGENTINA plans to defy dismal market conditions and issue $2bn of 30 year Bontes in its fledgling domestic Treasury bond market between now and the end of second quarter of 1999. The ministry of finance announced late yesterday that it had garnered enough interest from local pension funds to issue its longest dated bond ever, in a series of tranches. "Large investors have confidence in the country and want to invest for the long term," said undersecretary of finance, Miguel Kiguel. "We decided after several meetings with institutional investors that the most attractive instrument would be a 30-year bond."

LATIN markets were hit by another wave of selling yesterday as concerns about the outlook for Brazil heightened ahead of Brazil's presidential elections this Sunday. Although president Cardoso is a sure favourite to be re-elected, what sort of fiscal package will be announced by him -- and more importantly, when it will be announced and then whether it will be passed by congress -- is at the core of concerns still plaguing the markets.