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Belgium First Chicago is quietly arranging a rare foray into the syndicated loan market for Crédit Professionnel. The five year facility is understood to carry pricing of 25bp over Libor and is being organised on a confidential private placement basis.

Ghana Syndication of the finely priced $275m trade finance facility being organised for Cocobod by co-ordinating arranger Citibank International plc, plus arrangers Standard Chartered Bank and the Agricultural Development Bank of Ghana, has been a blow-out success.

INGRAM Micro, which is in both the Euro, US and Canadian markets for a series of three financings worth $1.65bn, has mandated NationsBank NA and ScotiaBank to arrange and co-ordinate the financings. European based lenders are being offered a $500m multicurrency revolving credit funding the company's European operations for which the borrower is Ingram Micro Co-ordination Center NV.

CITIBANK is in the initial stages of launching its DM1bn and $135m loan for Tarkett AG. The facility is to finance the German flooring products company's DM705m acquisition of Sommer's flooring business. In addition, the loan will provide the enlarged group with working capital and replace existing arrangements including the DM300m five year revolving credit signed in November 1995 and a $135m high yield bond issue.

Kuwait Syndication of the $1.2bn refinancing being sought by Equate Petrochemical Company has been completed oversubscribed. The syndication was targeted at existing syndicate banks, and few took the opportunity to withdraw from the deal.

Finland The well supported $350m seven year multicurrency revolving credit being arranged for Nokia Oy by Chase Investment Bank, Citibank NA and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell was signed last Friday in Helsinki.

Croatia The recently syndicated DM35m five years at 95bp over Libor term loan for Dalmatinska banka being arranged by Bayerische Landesbank and Bayerische Vereinsbank AG was signed on Tuesday in Zadar.

THE FRENCH real estate sector and the growth of securitisation continued to march hand-in-hand this week as Société Générale unveiled a new funding structure for French real estate lender Comptoir des Entrepreneurs.

SAKURA Bank has set up a unique partnership with Japan's biggest property developer, Mitsui Real Estate, to recover some of its delinquent commercial real estate loans using securitisation. A special purpose company, Reif Ltd, sold ¥10bn of five year bullet Eurobonds on Wednesday. The transaction was rated AA- by Nippon Investors Service, and broke down into 70% of fixed rate paper and 30% floating. The deal was privately placed with sophisticated European and Japanese investors after about two months of marketing.

FORD Motor Credit Company this week launched a DM1bn asset backed FRN via JP Morgan -- successfully inaugurating Globaldrive, its tailor made international securitisation vehicle. In preparation since the start of the year, the newly unveiled programme is the first of its kind in Europe, enabling the company to securitise a range of assets from a variety of jurisdictions.

WESTPAC will early next week launch a $517m securitisation of Australian residential mortgages in its first venture into international asset-backed markets. Launched via special purpose vehicle Westpac Securitisation Trust Series 1997-4E, the issue will be piloted by JP Morgan (books), and SBC Warburg and Morgan Stanley/Westpac as co-leads.

BANK OF Tokyo-Mitsubishi executed its second CLO this year with an array of Eurobonds in four currencies, totalling $1.7bn. The bank aimed to follow its pilot Wizard Finance transaction, which blew out in June, with a large liquid deal which would become the benchmark for Japanese loan securitisations.