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ING BARINGS was formally confirmed this week as the lead manager of an exchange offer for the Republic of Ukraine's foreign currency bonds. The exchange is designed to provide a solution to the conundrum whereby Ukraine faces a debt servicing burden of $3bn in 2000 armed with just $1bn of foreign exchange reserves. Included in the exchange, further details of which will be released on February 4, are a Eu500m 14.75% March 2000 euro-fungible issue, a $71m October 2000 amortising fiduciary transaction, $258m due on an amortising zero coupon dollar offering due September 2000, a DM1.53bn 16% February 2001 Deutschmark bond, and $300m of domestic bond debt owed to Russia's Gazprom.

The internet bond revolution embraced the ABS market this week as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter launched the first securitisation to be distributed on-line - a $526.316m credit card deal for its subsidiary Discover Financial Services. Investors in the US and Europe used Morgan Stanley's ClientLink website to review information about the deal, post indications of interest and make orders.

* Chase Manhattan Bank priced its first collateralised loan obligation this week, after a marketing period longer than some market participants had expected. Chase Loan Obligations USA Trust 2000-1 offered $997.5m of notes backed by a similar quantity of US corporate loans. Chase, which lead managed its own deal, declined to comment, citing 144A restrictions.

Nomura's principal finance group has been selected for the preliminary shortlist to acquire London's Millennium Dome after the Millennium Experience exhibition closes at the end of this year. The six shortlisted bidders have until the end of March to submit detailed proposals, including financial terms. Two or three candidates will then be chosen for the final stage.

The Eu4.65bn securitisation of delinquent contributions by the Istituto Nazionale della Previdenza Soziale, which manages the Italian social security system, is now trading significantly wider than the spreads at which it was launched by Caboto, Merrill Lynch and Paribas at the end of November. The widening calls into question the leads' claim during syndication that the INPS deal should trade tighter than mainstream ABS because of its size, liquidity and close connection to the Italian government.

Jersey-based legal and financial services partnership The Mourant Group is extending its securitisation related operations to London. This week the firm hired Margaret Bonsall, a former partner at Linklaters & Paines, to head a new London-based team providing multi-jurisdictional special purpose vehicle administration for ABS. And Mourant intends to move Jonathan Walker, one of its partners, to London in April to practice Jersey law nearer to the sources of business.

Trading books as well as debt portfolios of banks are exposed to a huge number of factors driving their mark-to-market value.

If financial markets behaved in the way assumed by the Black-Scholes option pricing model, crashes would never happen.

Hong Kong For the Asian equity market, the year 2000 had an eventful beginning with a record high followed by a wave of selling in Hong Kong, while a decision on IPO running order from the China Securities Regulatory Commission was eagerly anticipated by bankers.

* Cho Hung Bank is taking bids on its first senior debt issue of the year, a $200m one year FRN. Proposals for the deal are due by January 12, with the Ba2 rated bank on course to rank as the last Korean borrower of 1999 and the first of 2000. At the beginning of December, the bank raised $100m in lower tier 2 debt via Credit Suisse First Boston in a bid to meet end-of-year capital ratios set by the Korean government. With a January 2005 maturity, the issue was priced at 99.81 with a coupon of 495bp over six month Libor to yield 500bp over.

SALOMON Smith Barney will launch a $200m Nasdaq and Singapore listing for ST Assembly Test Services (STATS) on Monday in a deal that the bank hopes will repeat the success of Chartered Semiconductor during the last quarter. The Singapore Technologies spin-off hopes to tap the investor enthusiasm that generated a 16 times oversubscription for Chartered.

GE CAPITAL Australia kicked off fundraising in the domestic bond market this week with the launch of an A$300m deal via Salomon Smith Barney. The 2-1/2 year deal is the group's fourth domestic deal to date and brings its outstandings up to the A$1.6bn mark, making it the third largest domestic issuer behind Telstra and Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). But as a foretaste of the roughly A$6bn that GE Capital is planning to raise in the domestic market this year, bankers said that the group could soon become the market's largest benchmark issuer.