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THE UK DEBT Management Office and its financial adviser Schroders will next Thursday meet with sterling market participants to finalise plans for London & Continental Railway's government guaranteed £2.65bn channel tunnel rail link bond. Bankers expect the DMO to follow the meeting with an announcement that the bond will be launched via a Gilts style auction rather than as a syndicated Eurobond. Should the auction route be chosen, it will be the first time that a UK government guaranteed corporate bond has been launched in this manner.

BANK OF Tokyo-Mitsubishi and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank both postponed planned collateralised loan obligations this week as investors reeling from emerging market shocks demanded wider spreads. The deals suffered even though they are fully delinked from the banks' credit risk, and backed, in BTM's case, entirely by loans to US corporates which are not subsidiaries of Asian companies.

THE HOUSING Fund of Finland braved volatile bond markets this week to bring a FIM2.052bn ($380m) securitisation of social housing loans -- the first public European asset backed deal since the devaluation of the rouble sent markets spinning off balance two weeks ago. "We are delighted to have helped the Housing Fund to return with a large issue in a turbulent market and achieve an attractive cost of borrowing," said Christine Wahlsten, vice president in the capital markets division at Leonia Corporate Bank, which lead managed the deal jointly with ING Barings.

* Australian non-bank mortgage lender RAMS Home Loans Pty Ltd went ahead with its roadshow this week for a $500m mortgage backed Eurobond. A syndicate official at lead manager JP Morgan said the presentation had attracted a good response and the absence of other supply would help the deal, but the issuer was prepared to wait for markets to settle before launching.

SEVENTEEN institutions have expressed interest in the UK government's second £1bn sale of student loans. NM Rothschild, which is managing the sale, has sent them the preliminary information memorandum, and asked for indicative bids by October 9. "We are very pleased with the level of interest and quality of the candidates, which indicate an enthusiastic demand for the assets," said James Vaux, executive director at Rothschild.

Italy is regarded by many structured financiers as one of the most exciting markets in Europe. Not because there are a lot of deals around - since 1994 there have been just 12 asset-backed transactions by Italian issuers - but because the potential for future growth is so great.

Now active for over 10 years in international markets, monoline insurers continue to scour the globe for opportunities to lend their guarantee to structured financings, and to translate at least some of their domestic clout onto the overseas stage. The going has not always been easy; hoping to ride the wave of a burgeoning international asset-backed market, monolines were, like other hopeful participants, disappointed by the pace of growth, and by the fragmented nature of the opportunities on offer.

The contraction in spreads between the Greek and the German government bond yield curves has been one barometer of the vastly improved prospects of a speedy Greek entry into Emu.

If March 13 was Fabulous Friday for the Greek economy and its capital market, then August 24 was Miserable Monday. This was the day which local bankers and brokers had been looking forward to as a major landmark in the modernisation of the Greek banking industry, the development of the privatisation programme and, in turn, the progress which Greece was making towards Emu membership.

"The Belgian securitisation market, although young, presents most of the characteristics of a mature European market," says Gaëlle Philippe-Viriot, assistant vice president and analyst at Moody's Investors Services in Paris. "A well adapted legal framework, a growing diversity of securitised assets and sellers, increased interest by large financial institutions and transaction structures that meet both investor demand and originator constraints."

The prospect of a free-flowing German securitisation market continues to enthral and frustrate structured financiers in equal measure.

Behind the scenes, bankers are slowly building on the lively start made in the Swiss asset backed bond market earlier this year when the first securitisation of freight rolling stock in Europe and the first term securitisation of Swiss mortgages took place.