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THE RUSSIAN government is planning to reduce its 40% stake in Gazprom, the country's natural gas monopoly, to 35% towards the end of the year. The energy ministry announced the proposed sale last night (Friday) but was unclear as to how the sale would take place.

MERRILL LYNCH this week completed the long awaited sale of stock in EFG Hermes, the prestigious Egyptian investment bank, in a deal which signalled to the market that there is still demand from emerging market investors for the right stock despite uncertain market conditions. The US bank had been booked to execute the sale of EFG stock for some time but had been reluctant to approach a market in which emerging market investors proved unwilling to pay anything above the minimum price for assets from this and other developing regions.

NOMURA is to shortly announce the lead manager for its divestment of William Hill, the UK betting shop group. Several potential candidates have been earmarked but the frontrunner is Deutsche Bank. The Japanese bank is selling the group in a stockmarket flotation which will result in the group obtaining a listing in London. It purchased the company, which operates betting shops throughout the British Isles, last year from the then diversified leisure group, Brent Walker, where it was one of the few profitable entities owned by the ailing holding company.

DLJ HAS completed the sale of stock in ICO, the international satellite group which is raising new capital through the issue of high yield debt, a bond with equity warrants and via its initial public offering. DLJ, which was joined by co-lead managers CSFB and Salomon Smith Barney, last night gained SEC approval for the new terms of the equity offering and the shares should be priced in the centre of the range at $13.50 this (Friday) morning in New York.

LEAD managers JP Morgan and Warburg Dillon Read this week revealed the shape of the Sfr10bn ($6.8bn) Swisscom flotation, launched last week. In what will be the largest deal to reach the equity capital markets during the third quarter of the year, some Sfr2.8bn will be raised in a capital increase which will coincide with the flotation of around Sfr7.2bn in the form of a divestment of secondary shares by the government.

DRESDNER Kleinwort Benson this week completed the sale of 400,000 ordinary shares for Aixtron, the Germany producer of components for cellular phones. The bank marketed them to international and local investors in a non-underwritten accelerated bookbuilt deal.

THE SPANISH market looks in reasonable shape to absorb the diversity of stock sales and flotations on offer during the third quarter of 1998. Although the Madrid stockmarket has not been immune to the weaker sentiment on Wall Street that has seen the Dow lose around 400 points in a week, the general index has benefited from some good corporate news and Mediterranean markets have displayed a degree of resilience.

THE NEW issue market remained volatile this week for both small and large offerings. Despite reporting healthy second quarter earnings, Del Monte Foods had to withdraw its IPO, blaming current market conditions. The company had planned to offer some 13.5m shares and shareholders 4m shares at a price range of $17 to $20, but investors were unwilling to buy within the range and lead manager Morgan Stanley Dean Witter reduced it to $16 to $18. The size of the deal was also reduced from 17.5m to 14.7m shares.

* Cable & Wireless (C&W), the UK telecommunications group, has increased its holding in Bezeq, the Israeli state-owned operator, from 10% to 13%. The purchaser has been building up its ownership of Bezeq in the last three years and its intention to increase its level of ownership has been blamed by some as having scuppered the government's plans to privatise the group. Few institutional investors are interested in purchasing a stake in a company which has an industrial shareholder at this level.

LEAD managers Merrill Lynch and SG this week completed the $1.1bn capital increase for the French components manufacturer, Valeo. The deal, which has proved difficult to execute, arrived on the market at a time of extreme new issue fatigue compounded by volatile and largely correcting markets.

THE ITALIAN primary market is to play host to a slew of corporate, banking and privatisation deals in the third quarter, following the summer slowdown. Despite the softer market tone which has affected continental Europe for the past few weeks, strategists in the Italian market say that a keen response is expected for the variety of IPOs and divestments.

BAYERISCHE Landesbank, Deutsche Bank and Greenwich NatWest have signed the $50m one year term loan for Inkombank, increasing it to $63m after appetite proved stronger than anticipated. The transaction is a refinancing of a $115m loan arranged last year. However, because of the poor economic conditions, the arrangers and the borrower decided that a lower amount would be more prudent this year.