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WHAT'S THE hottest buzz around the Euromarkets' favourite watering holes and bars? Yes, it is that Warburg Dillon Read folk hero and international playboy, Stephen West, was about to abandon ship. Please don't Stephen! WDR has quite enough dirty washing to hang up on the line without you scarpering off to pastures new.

ABN AMRO underlined its determination to become one of the top players in the global fixed income markets this week when it announced the hiring of Jim Pelgrift as global head of credit trading. The appointment of Pelgrift is a major coup for ABN Amro, and is aimed at boosting the firm's activities in a number of areas -- notably high yield debt, emerging markets and the US capital markets.

MACQUARIE Securitisation Ltd, Australia's leading non-bank mortgage lender, moved swiftly to soak up European demand for Australian mortgage backed securities last Friday, launching a $450m deal through JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank. A structured products official at bookrunner JP Morgan said: "We talk to the issuer regularly about the state of the markets, but the idea for this deal germinated only the week before last. This is a quiet period for issuance and there is still a lot of demand left over from Westpac's global deal in May."

* MBNA's fifth credit card deal of the year blew out this week as Lehman Brothers brought an $882.4m floater in response to a reverse enquiry. The Series 1998-E issue has a 9.7 year soft bullet expected maturity -- its $750m of 'A' notes priced at 14.5bp over three month Libor. Class 'B', worth $66.2m and rated A2/A+, came at 33bp over, while the privately placed 'C' tranche offered the same amount of triple-B rated securities.

NIKKO Europe's principal finance group has added two more UK motorway service area (MSA) companies to the RoadChef portfolio it bought in May. RoadChef will pay £80m for Blue Boar, which has three functioning MSAs, and Take A Break, which operates one site which is one of the largest in the UK. Nikko is buying all the shares in the companies from venture capital group 3i and their existing managers.

The 1990s have provided a wealth of lessons for risk managers.

THE MALAYSIAN government's plan to provide Asia with a critical new bond market benchmark received a temporary blow yesterday (Thursday) after Moody's rating action against Japan spelt new trouble for Asian spreads.

* India's UTI Bank is planning an IPO to raise Rp735m, with shares to be priced at Rp21 per share. No timescale is yet known for the deal. DSP Merrill Lynch is lead manager. * SBI Capital Markets has revised its memorandum of understanding with Lehman Brothers. The document focused solely on the management of GDRs for Indian companies and created an exclusive relationship between the two entities. SBI Capital is now free from this constraint when pitching for GDR accounts and can ally itself with other banks.

ROCLA Industries' IPO will price at the low end of the A$4 to A$4.75 range today (Friday). Earlier in the week speculation had centred around a price of A$4.50 but a tailing off of investor interest led to a more cautious approach being taken by lead managers BT Alex Brown and Credit Suisse First Boston. "At A$4 the firm is something of a bargain," said one banker, "but closer to A$4.50 foreign buyers couldn't see a reason to be involved when there are plenty of other building materials companies available cheaper." A total of 79m secondary shares and 39m new shares are being sold, with 70% of the deal due to go to institutions. Yesterday (Thursday) almost one half of the major fund managers in Australia were thought to have put in firm bids for shares, according to bankers.

ONE OF Asia's few remaining vibrant debt markets has been closed following moves by the Taiwanese government to suspend supranational issuance in its domestic bond market. Local bankers said that the central bank put the ban in place to cut off one of the few available avenues of speculation against the Taiwanese currency. Said one: "The government has a sense of speculative sentiment prevailing in the market and will not approve any new supranational issues until the currency situation settles down."

INDICATIONS THAT the summer lull has descended on the Euromarkets grew this week as issuance in most currencies fell to a low point for the year. The sterling sector was one exception to the rule, providing investors with £500m of long-dated supply and £150m of four year bonds, all issued on the same day.