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INVESTMENT bankers this week exploited a window of demand for Nordic equity with the launch of two deals from Finland and the pricing and successful aftermarket performance of another Finnish transaction. The 9.6m share offering for manufacturing services group Elcoteq Network was priced by UBS at FIM70 above the mid-point of the initial range of FIM60 to FIM75.

GLOBAL co-ordinator Dresdner Kleinwort Benson this week announced the price range for its offering of shares in UK telecoms operator Energis, which it is marketing to institutional investors. The 250p to 325p range, capitalising the firm at £737m to £941m, was welcomed as realistic by analysts, who had feared the pricing would be much more aggressive. They said that DKB had been wise to price the offering cautiously given the volatile market conditions and investors' aversion to this part of the telecoms sector after a profits warning this week from Ionica, one of the latest entrants to the UK market.

INTERNATIONAL and domestic investors are lapping up the supply of primary equity in the German market, with a number of IPOs attracting strong demand in spite of market instability. UBS and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell have completed the sale of stock in DIS, the employment services group.

BOOKRUNNER UBS is to press ahead with the international sale of stock in Unibanka of Latvia, braving the unsettled environment for emerging market equities. Unibanka is partially owned by the government which controls around 32% of its equity capital. Of the remainder, 21% is in the form of a free float on the Riga stock exchange, with 20% held by the EBRD, 8% controlled by Swedfund and the remaining 19% owned by various small investors.

THE NEWLY issued shares of Hungarian telecoms operator Matav have performed well in their first week of trading, further underlining the success of eastern Europe's largest equity offering. The privatisation was executed last week at a time of intense weakness on the Bundapest stock market, which fell 20% during the week and by some 12% on the day of pricing.

* Lead manager Morgan Stanley has completed a successful offering of shares in Ittierre, the Italian producer of designer labelled clothing under licence. Despite investors' coolness towards the luxury goods sector, the issue was well oversubscribed.

MORGAN Stanley Dean Witter this week launched an offering of DM252.85m exchangeable bonds for Beteiligungs-verwaltungsgesellschaft Nordrhein-Westfalen to dispose of the regional authority's holding of shares in recently privatised airline Lufthansa. The deal sold quickly, attracting keen demand from a wide variety of investors. The five year bonds offer buyers an annual coupon of 2-1/8% and a conversion premium of 24%.

THE FRENCH government is planning to organise a beauty parade to select lead managers for the upcoming divestiture of its remaining 36% stake in car manufacturer Renault. The deal will raise around Ffr12bn and should be structured in a similar way to the government's last sale of Renault stock three years ago, for which BNP and Crédit Agricole were bookrunners and ABN AMRO and Lazard Frères were joint lead managers.

* International Home Foods raised $272m through lead manager Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette this week. The firm priced the shares at $20, at the top of the pricing range of $18-$20. Some 13.6m shares were offered, of which 3m were sold by existing shareholders. Some 20% of the stock was targeted at international investors. The deal was significantly oversubscribed, with particularly strong demand reported from the US.

CITIBANK International and joint arranger African Export-Import Bank have launched syndication of a $30m three year amortising term loan at 200bp for Libor for the Central Bank of the Seychelles. The loan, the first international fund raising for the country, is to fund infrastructure projects and the expansion of Indian Ocean Tuna (IOT), a tuna processor 40% owned by the government of the Seychelles and 60% by HJ Heinz.

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