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THE Kingdom of Morocco, which is looking to tap the Euromarkets for the first time this year, this week received its first international credit ratings. Moody's Investors Service assigned the country a Ba1 long term foreign currency rating, while Standard & Poor's issued a BB rating.

THE Moscow city telephone network, Moskovskaya Gorodskaya Telefonnaya SET (MGTS), this week became the first Russian issuer to tap the public Eurobond markets since the Russian Federation increased its benchmark 10 year dollar bond last October. Credit Suisse First Boston and Salomon Smith Barney were joint leads on the $150m three year transaction.

THE REPUBLIC of Ukraine is to become the first east European borrower to launch a euro denominated issue next week. The B2 rated borrower this week hosted simultaneous investor presentations in Milan, Zurich and Paris on Thursday for the issue which is to emerge for at least Eu200m.

ARGENTINE oil company YPF broke a four month drought of blue chip Latin corporate bond issuance in the dollar market this week with a blow-out $350m five year Yankee bond priced more than 100bp inside the Republic of Argentina yield curve. The deal, led by Credit Suisse First Boston, was increased from $300m and launched at just 158bp over Treasuries at a time when Argentina 2003s were trading around 265bp and outstanding YPF 2004s were at 177bp. Although it widened out slightly to around 162bp on the back of a weak Treasury market, bankers considered the YPF bonds to be fairly priced.

AFTER TWO years of rapid growth, the German primary market is set to expand still further with a large number of deals expected for the second and third quarters of this year. Last year, the race to raise capital proved too fast for the markets and several opportunistic deals, such as Volkswagen's planned issue, were postponed when stockmarkets weakened in November.

COCA-COLA Amatil of Australia has hired SBC Warburg Dillon Read to advise on the flotation of its European operations, Coca-Cola Beverages (CCB), which is to be listed in London later this year with an initial market capitalisation expected at around $3.2bn (£2bn). Although there will be no capital increase, with the parent receiving the proceeds of the spin-off, the move enables CCB to raise equity capital in the future.

* Morgan Stanley Dean Witter has been hired by Gianni Versace, the Italian fashion designer group, to advise on its flotation. The company, which recorded sales of Lit1,735bn ($976m) last year, will sell up to 25% of its equity capital. It was intending to list its stock last year but postponed the deal after the death of its founder, Gianni Versace. The company made consolidated pretax profits of Lit167bn in 1996 on consolidated revenue of Lit854bn and turnover of Lit1,665bn.

TELEFONICA put an end to weeks of speculation and confirmed this week that it plans to launch a capital increase. Many banks have recently been pitching their services to the Spanish telecoms giant, which has been hinting for some time that it wanted to tap the markets this year.

US STOCKMARKETS plunged this week in what many observers believe is but a breathing space from the tearaway rises of recent weeks. Both the Dow Jones and Nasdaq indices were down, the latter hit by faltering technology stocks. The Dow, which had hit a record high of 8584.83 on Tuesday, lost over 60 points Wednesday as investors cashed in on gains made over five straight days of records.

NOMURA has completed the international sale of stock in Union Bank of Estonia (Eesti Uhispank), the second largest bank in Estonia. When the lead manager closed the books yesterday (Thursday), the deal was nearly 10 times oversubscribed by investors keen to invest in the restructuring of the country's banking industry. The 3.72m GDRs represented 11.16m ordinary shares and were priced at $13.10 or Eek63.50 a share to raise Eek710m ($49m).

MERRILL Lynch this week defied softer market conditions to complete the $1.28bn capital increase for Tyco International in a deal that was so heavily oversubscribed that the lead manager exercised the greenshoe option immediately. Tyco, the world's largest producer of fire protection materials, initially sold 22m common shares at $50.75 which represents the closing price of the stock in New York on Tuesday. But after the greenshoe was exercised, the deal was increased to 25.3m shares.

LEAD manager Crédit Lyonnais this week completed its Ffr2.2bn capital increase for French waste management company Sita. The deal takes the form of a priority rights issue and involves the sale of new shares to existing and new investors; the proceeds will be used to finance the acquisition of Browning Ferris businesses outside the US.