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ITALY'S IRI has announced plans to further reduce its stake in Aeroporti di Roma through a stock offering this year. Lehman Brothers led the IPO for the company in July, regarded as one of the most successful privatisations completed last year. Lehman is favourite to get the opportunity to repeat that success with the follow-on offer.

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MORGAN Stanley Dean Witter and Salomon Smith Barney again showed themselves to be two of the most aggressive fee-cutters in the Brazilian privatisation advisory and equity business this week by undercutting their competition by one third to win the coveted Telebras advisory mandate. The Morgan Stanley/Salomon led Brasilcom consortium, which once lagged third in the technical portion of the bid, snatched the mandate away from its technically better-rated rivals by bidding what is believed to be the lowest fee level yet submitted for a Brazilian privatisation advisory mandate.

AJAX is set to float on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the first Dutch football club to do so. The float marks a growing move to public status among European football clubs. Although the majority of clubs to have listed so far are from the UK, other countries are moving down that path as the sport rapidly becomes commercialised. Germany's Borussia Dortmund announced this week it intends to float on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, a move already foreshadowed by Bayern Munich.

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THE SPANISH government successfully sold its remaining holding of Argentaria stock this week, in an offering that demonstrated the continuing appetite for Spanish equity and for the country's financial sector. Priced at Pta10,790, the institutional offering was seven times oversubscribed; the retail tranche was 21 times oversubscribed at Pta10,457, or a discount of 3%.

ARGENTINA THIS week signalled the official end to the days of lira deals priced as much as 75bp inside dollar yield curves, when it launched its first of 14 lira deals in line with dollar spreads. Needing size and a longer maturity, Argentina launched a Lit750bn deal maturing in 2009 with a 10.375% upfront coupon stepping down to 8% in 2000. Chase and Paribas were the joint leads.

Australia Toronto-Dominion Bank Australia has postponed the A$85m term loan for Signature Security Group and Securitas Electronic Protection due to the parent company raising further capital from an additional equity offering. New Zealand Westpac Banking Corp is preparing an information memorandum for the NZ$115m project financing for Mokai geothermal power station. Westpac has underwritten the entire facility.

Market commentary Compiled by Gerard Perrignon, Hambros Bank Ltd, London. Tel: +44 171-865 1759