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EQUITY offerings from Finland's HK Ruokatalo and Denmark's Neurosearch, Licenergy and Vestas will provide what little activity there is in the Nordic region's equity markets. The supply of primary and secondary equity from corporate issuers continues to look thin, with regional salesmen saying that international investors are waiting for activity to pick up with a view to topping up their investments.

THE Italian insurer, Ina, which was privatised five years ago, this week revealed details of its plan to pull out of its property businesses. As foreshadowed in Euroweek last month, the group will form a separate company for its property activities, which will be known as Union Immobiliare SpA. Ina will then float a minority of the new company's equity capital on the Milan bourse. Morgan Stanley has been nominated as the global co-ordinator of the transaction, which is not expected to reach the markets before the last quarter of this year. Continental European stock salesmen argued this week that if the current economic recovery and the upward movement in property prices continues then this will be a stock worth waiting for.

* Lehman Brothers has completed one of the most successful French IPOs this year with the sale of stock in bio-tech group Transgene. The offering, which was around 15 times oversubscribed, results in a dual listing for the company on the Nouveau Marché and Nasdaq. Lehman and joint lead manager Credit Suisse First Boston were able to close the deal in the face of heavy oversubscription -- pricing the stock at $14.50, the top of the indicated price range. Some 1.314m GDRs were sold to investors with each receipt representing three shares. The joint leads were joined by Crédit Lyonnais and Lazard Capital Markets as co-managers.

THE Portuguese government looks likely to move away from its traditional method of rotating lead managers for privatisation mandates, instead rewarding banks which have performed well in previous sales. Goldman Sachs looks likely to team up with ABN Amro Rothschild and BPI to lead the next sale of stock in Electricidade de Portugal (EdP) while Morgan Stanley and BFE looks front runners for the sale of a further stake in the national cement producer, Cimpor. These banks were involved in the companies' earlier sales.

INVESTORS in some of France's largest and best corporates will be offered new stock in capital increases in the next few weeks. The wave of activity demonstrates that the country's leading industrial groups, in common with their German counterparts, intend to make the most of the current bull market sweeping through continental exchanges. Household names such as Cap Gemini, Lafarge and Latecoere are all set to raise capital from existing investors, but the strength of the Paris market is also inspiring many other smaller cap groups to list shares and raise additional capital on the public markets.

THE supply of convertible paper continued to build this week, following last week's range of successful deals from high quality issuers. Institutional investors lapped up the opportunity to purchase plain vanilla deals as well as synthetics and exchangeables, and salesmen say that the reception given to these transactions should be more than enough to encourage other banks and corporates to issue more paper. Lead manager Nomura joined forces with co-lead ABN Amro Rothschild and co-manager Robert Fleming to launch a rare UK convertible, a £50m issue for bio-tech group, Scotia.

NATIONAL telecom operator, Telefónica, will bolster its equity capital through a Pta600bn ($3.87bn) rights issue in the largest call yet on existing shareholders for a corporate capital increase in the Spanish market. Bank BCH had already announced that it will increase its capital through a $1.1bn rights issue.

THE US stockmarkets followed the pattern established in recent weeks, with both the Dow Jones and Nasdaq indices climbing steadily at the beginning of the week only to subside by Thursday as investors consolidated gains. Although many participants anticipated that the Dow would hit the 9,000 mark for the first time, other buyers appeared to be on the sidelines, taking stock of recent rises and the mid-April corporate reporting season.

KREDITANSTALT für Wiederaufbau took the Euromarkets by storm this week with the launch of a DM4bn bond, the agency's debut global and its first benchmark deal since receiving an explicit German government guarantee.