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DEUTSCHE Bank and Banco Cisf brought the first securitisation of Portuguese assets to the bond market this week, as Banco Comercial Português parcelled over 33,000 consumer loans into DM435.1m of floating rate notes. "Our BIS ratio is 11%, so we are not under any capital pressure, but the deal will improve our return on equity," said Nuno Alves, senior manager at Banco Cisf, BCP's investment banking subsidiary.

Why is it when a hedge fund shorts stock its risk-adjusted performance includes its shorting activity, but when a pension fund lends a security its risk-adjusted performance typically does not include its securities lending activity?

JUMPING ahead of other Asian sovereign borrowers for the second time this year, the Philippines is set to return to the international debt markets by the beginning of next month with a fourth Libor/T-Bill pass-through note. The return of the sovereign via its issuing conduit, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), has been prompted by the impending maturity of its first innovative Libor/T-Bill note on August 14.

THE KOREA Asset Management Corporation (Kamco) has been forced to compress its 1998 borrowing programme into two jumbo issues in order to meet its government targets for the purchase of non performing loans (NPLs) in the Korean banking system. Officials said that despite the last minute postponement of its DM1bn euro-fungible deal last week, the corporation intends to re-activate the transaction as soon as secondary market spreads on the Republic of Korea's 2003 issue re-gain reasonable levels. "We are targeting a spread of less than 400bp and continue to watch the movement of the RoK 2003 bond," said one official. "We are ready to hit the market at any moment and are hoping that the right time will be the beginning of September."

* The Indian government is making moves to open up its domestic bond market to supranational issuance in a bid to improve infrastructure financing in the country. But, bankers still see enormous hurdles in developing market infrastructure. In the shorter term triple-A rated credits are likely to shy away in the face of US-led sanctions imposed after India's nuclear testing programme. Finance officials said that the idea of allowing multilateral agencies to float rupee-denominated bonds to fund infrastructure development had been developed in recent meetings with HSBC, which has done the lion's share of the work of developing Hong Kong's highly active Hong Kong dollar market.

* Asian Securitisation & Infrastructure Assurance Ltd, Asia's only monoline insurer, has failed to convince its shareholders to provide the $250m in new capital and reinsurance commitments demanded by Standard & Poor's, which downgraded the company's claims paying ability from A to BB in January. The insurer issued a statement declaring that the shareholders of its parent, Asia Credit Services (Pte) Ltd, "were unable at this time to implement a recapitalisation plan specifically to restore Standard & Poor's investment grade rating of ASIA Ltd."

THAILAND's United Broadcasting Corporation this week formed the centre of attention in painfully thin Asian equity markets as the newly formed company sought to raise $150m from the sale of both primary and secondary shares. In the event only the primary portion of the sale was completed, raising Bt21.6bn ($51.8m) and prompting bankers to ask how much sole lead manager Paribas had taken onto its books.

NTT DoCoMo, the cellular phone subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp, could raise up to ¥19.5bn from a partial listing on the first section of the Tokyo stock exchange. The deal (which has Nikko Securities and Goldman Sachs as joint lead managers) could list as early as October. But analysts unconnected to the float said while the company has never been in better health and would be an undoubted success on listing, one major obstacle remains in the way of the float. The government may want to sell down some of its NTT shares around the same time and that trade would likely get priority. Proceeds from the sale of a fourth tranche of NTT have already been factored into the 1998 fiscal budget.

* Rana Kapoor, managing director and head of investment banking for Rabo India Finance, and three other partners have entered a joint venture agreement with Rabobank. The business will be a full service operation focusing on both domestic and international debt capital markets, M&A, private equity, food, agriculture and healthcare financing, project and structured finance, corporate banking and asset financing.

THE VENEZUELAN government is seeking congressional approval to raise a further $2.063 billion from supranationals and the international bond markets to plug its widening fiscal deficit. Planning Minister Teodoro Petkoff this week announced the extra debt raising plans as part of a broader package of reforms aimed at reducing its fiscal deficit, seen at around $4bn for this year.

GENERAL syndication will close early next week for the offshore debt tranches of the $2bn Shandong Guangzhou Power Company project financing -- China's largest limited recourse deal to date. Arrangers Greenwich NatWest (ECGD agent), IBJ Asia (bookrunner and financial model agent) and SG Asia (global facility agent, technical bank and bookrunner) expect the final number of banks coming into the deal to be small at around 10.

GOLDMAN Sachs and Cariplo have completed the Lit1.5tr ($563m) sale of shares in the north Italian energy group Azienda Energetica Milanese (AEM), in the largest IPO to be hosted by the Italian market this year. The lead managers successfully completed the sale of the shares at Lit1,670 -- at the top end of the indicated price range -- overcoming some of the antipathy towards privatisation previously exhibited in the country.