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The Republic of the Philippines completed Asia's first sovereign euro transaction yesterday (Thursday), kicking into touch doubts over its determination to complete a deal in the face of worsened market conditions. The combined impact of the poor secondary market trading spreads of recent emerging market deals, disappointment with the performance of the euro and a lack of familiarity with the Philippines as a credit, made the selling job of bookrunners Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Warburg Dillon Read extremely difficult.

The STALLED recapitalisation of the Thai banking sector looks set to resume next month with Salomon Smith Barney heading a strong syndicate line-up for the $1.75bn equity raising for Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), while a string of smaller names are also making fresh capital calls. The SCB deal is an important one for the region's moribund equity new issues market, and so its fate will be closely watched by professionals.

Japanese asset backed issuance reached a crescendo this week, as finance companies hastened to fulfil funding targets before the end of the financial year on March 31. Five deals were launched this week without any apparent sign of investor fatigue - and significantly, only one transaction was swapped into a foreign currency. Market watchers said that while most Japanese investors are still unfamiliar with securitisation, demand is on the increase.

The Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) and European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) signalled a new spate of international activity in the Singapore dollar market, with the launch this week of debut transactions. Bankers believe that March is shaping up to be a particularly busy month as a handful of international borrowers accelerate deals in the belief that widening swap spreads will allow them to meet their sub-Libor funding targets.

Banks have begun tentative pre-marketing for Siam Commercial Bank's (SCB) $1.75bn equity fundraising, with some details emerging despite the issuer's reluctance to officially name syndicate members. Around 6.4bn new shares will be issued; SCB's executive director said that 220m of shares would be reserved for the conversion of outstanding convertible bonds. The remainder will be sold in the form of preferred shares with warrants attached to buy a matching percentage from the government at a later date.

Merrill Lynch priced the landmark securitisation of Hong Kong commercial property for The Wharf (Holdings) Ltd last Friday, at spreads well inside initial price talk. The deal's nine tranche structure, offering a choice of floating rate US dollar, floating rate Hong Kong dollar and fixed rate Hong Kong dollar paper at each of three rating levels, proved the key to unlocking investor demand around the world.

India Infosys Technology's ADR issue is between 15 and 20 times oversubscribed, according to syndicate bankers. The company now faces the unusual prospect of potentially having to reduce the size of the NationsBanc Montgomery-led issue to comply with Indian government restrictions.

Philippines * Republic of the Philippines

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Australia Lead arrangers Citibank NA (Australia) and WestLB Australia have launched the A$335m 7-3/4 project financing for Hutchison Telecommunications (Australia).

* Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten NV Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA