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PORTUGAL Telecom made its debut in the international capital markets this week with a Eu1bn 10 year transaction. Bankers praised the issuer for its careful preparation, which included roadshows in several European countries. Although the issue moved out in line with the market on Thursday, the general consensus was that the deal had been fairly priced.

THE UK Private Finance Initiative (PFI) project bond market has sprung back into life over the past week, with the launch of two issues -- one introducing investors to a new asset class and the second reinforcing the credibility of an existing sector, healthcare. Ending a hiatus since the third quarter of last year, RBC DS Global Markets brought the first water utility PFI bond to market with the launch of a £79.3m issue through Stirling Water Seafield Finance plc, for the Stirling Water consortium.

NOMURA'S principal finance group this week launched the largest securitisation of UK pubs, parcelling rents and beer sales revenues from its Unique Pub Co into £810m of bonds with maturities out to 25 years. Nomura created Unique in December last year, by selecting 2,614 pubs from the 4,300 in the Inntrepreneur and Spring Inns portfolios that it had bought from Grand Met and Fosters for £1.2bn at the end of 1997.

GOLDMAN Sachs this week launched an innovative credit linked structure that provides a hedge for some of the insurance exposure of Gerling Insurance Group. Gerling's intention is to free up capital that it holds against the remote risk of very severe losses on its portfolio of credit insurance contracts for small businesses. But the insurer has avoided the uncomfortable process of having its books picked over by rating agencies, by using a separate pool of businesses as the reference portfolio.

JOINT bookrunners Bear Stearns, De Nationale Investeringsbank and ING Barings-BBL this week launched the fourth in a series of securitisations of Dutch residential mortgages for subsidiaries of DNIB, or insurance companies that originate mortgages financed by the bank. The Dutch tax system is highly favourable to home ownership, and has encouraged insurance companies to originate sophisticated savings and investment mortgages linked to insurance policies -- the combination is in part a tax shelter for the borrowers.

BANK OF Tokyo-Mitsubishi this week priced its $1bn securitisation of loans to US corporates, Millennium Loan Trust. JP Morgan and Tokyo-Mitsubishi International ran the books jointly for the deal's $450m 'A1' tranche -- unusually for a US CLO, it has a passthrough rather than a soft bullet structure. With an average life of 1.9 years and expected maturity in July 2002, it priced at 22bp over one month Libor.

The prices of forwards, futures and options contain a great deal of information about what the market thinks or fears about future market conditions.

Merrill Lynch is poised to launch Shinhan Bank's GDR sale of up to $400m at the beginning of April, raising hopes that Korea will lead the rehabilitation of Asia's moribund equity markets. Together with next week's pricing of Kepco's $500m ADR sale and the imminent launch of Korea Telecom's IPO, the Shinhan sale would provide the first continuous deal flow from any single country in the region for more months than equity capital market bankers care to recall.

China Liuzhou Wuling Auto, Zhejiang Hisum Pharmaceutical and Xuzhou Engineering have dealt the stumbling 'B' share market a further blow this week in announcing that they were withdrawing their plans for IPO issues this year due to low valuations on the market.

The Singapore corporate bond market saw the beginnings of a credit curve develop this week following the launch of a debut S$150m five year deal from Ford Motor Credit. Led by Deutsche Bank with HSBC as co-lead, the A1/A rated five year issue was the first by an overseas borrower not to be rated triple-A.

Australia's highest rated corporate credit blazed a new trail through the domestic bond market this week with the launch of one of the largest and longest dated issues the sector has yet seen. The A$530m split five and 10 year transaction for triple-A rated Australia Post is scheduled to be priced today (Friday) by lead manager Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), after attracting huge levels of oversubscription from both domestic and international investors.

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.