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THE ASIAN Development Bank is premarketing a A$500m-plus Kangaroo bond which it hopes to launch within two weeks. Meanwhile, AMP Banking has mandated Westpac as lead manager for its domestic MTN programme. Investors have reacted positively to the ADB issue, prompting speculation that an issue could come as soon as next week. Warburg Dillon Read has been mandated as lead manager on the transaction, but officials at the bank declined to comment and said the issuer was merely considering accessing the domestic Aussie dollar market.

A PLACEMENT of Venture Manufacturing shares and the launch of an IPO for Chew Eu Hock (CEH) Holdings breathed life into a moribund Singapore share market this week. ING Barings placed 15m Venture Manufacturing shares from majority stakeholder Metchem Engineering, raising S$63.75m ($36.55). The shares were priced at S$4.25, a 1% discount to the five day average.

* Japan Development Bank launched its first international bond of 1998 this week when it issued ¥25bn of puttable bonds via Tokyo-Mitsubishi International. The 30 year bonds are puttable at years 10, 15, 20 and 25. The structure was used to give investors nervous about the state of the Japanese economy a defensive play. The bonds were all sold to institutions in Europe.

Australia * Colonial has completed an equity placement just three months after its last offering, with a A$264.4m ($155.8m) sale of 53.96m ordinary shares to fund its acquisition of Prudential Corporation's Australian and New Zealand businesses.

ONE YEAR after the Asian financial crisis began to break, the region's debt markets show little sign of recovery. This week, spreads on the bonds of the leading Asian issuers widened again. Deal flow for the rest of the year is expected to be severely limited. The irony that Russia's currency woes have induced the latest round of spread widening in Asian debt was not lost on the region's bankers -- Russia's own problems first came to light in the wake of the Asian contagion.

THE REPUBLIC of Argentina this week said it will wait until November if need be for markets to stabilise before issuing any more bonds internationally or locally. "We have announced that we will not be doing transactions internationally or locally while the markets are so unstable," Federico Molina, managing director of the Argentine national bureau of public credit told Euroweek.

THE LATIN debt and equity markets were hit by yet another tidal wave of panic selling this week as devaluation fears spread to Venezuela. Despite government denials that a rumoured 17% to 20% bolivar devaluation was imminent, traders and investors dumped Venezuelan bonds. Its 30 year global bond hit a price low of 40 on Thursday before closing at 45.25 and a spread of 1500bp. Its 2018s, launched in late July at 824bp, were around 1,745bp.

PREPARATIONS for the Swisscom privatisation moved up a gear this week, following the company's release of a strong set of first half results yesterday (Thursday). The second round of analyst meetings took place in tandem with the results release. Pre-marketing for the $5bn+ offering is due to start in the last week of August, with the deal likely to close in late September.

HEIGHTENED stockmarket volatility as a result of Asia's continuing crisis and Russia's collapse will have an adverse effect on the new issue market for the rest of the year, syndicate managers warned this week. The pipeline of equity issues is bulging from September onwards, with an array of planned privatisation and corporate issues from developed and emerging markets.

RECENT market turmoil has taken its toll on US new issues, even in the typically quiet month of August. Despite the improved mood on Wall Street following a solid rally early in the week, new issues continued to suffer and several deals were postponed or reduced in size. One deal that was warmly received by the market was the Goldman Sachs-led IPO for Entrust Technologies, which raised $142m after exercise of the greenshoe option instead of the anticipated $106m.

FINLAND looks set to be at the centre of investors' attention over the next few months, as the government prepares the launch of two key privatisations -- of oil and electricity group Fortum (the former IVO-Neste) and telecom operator Sonera. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Warburg Dillon Read are leading the Fortum sale, which should raise around $1bn through the flotation of some 25% of the company.

THE THREAT of a potentially hectic period of French privatisation activity in the remaining months of the year has eased with the news that the partial privatisation of Air France has been put back until 1999. Yesterday the transport ministry confirmed that the sale, originally scheduled for the autumn, would not go ahead until the first quarter of next year.