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MORGAN STANLEY Dean Witter has launched a Lit350bn ($200m) capital increase for Banca Popolare di Brescia in the form a sale of new shares without pre-emptive rights. Existing shareholders have approved the move at the latest general meeting.

MARKET SOURCES in London point to ING Barings as the winner of the beauty parade to lead manage the offering of stock in Jordan's Arab Potash, one of a number of offerings planned from the region. The firm has been competing with Nomura and HSBC to lead the deal, which should reach the markets in the next two months.

DRESDNER Kleinwort Benson and SBC Warburg Dillon Read will shortly launch the German government's sale of stock in its national airline, Lufthansa, after the government this week launched a marketing campaign aimed at retail investors in the local market. The authorities will use the now established methods of offering greater allocations to reward early commitments from retail investors. These buyers will also

MITSUI TRUST this week took advantage of the swelling appetite for Japanese bank convertible issues with a ¥100bn offering via Goldman Sachs and Mitsui. Launched for MTI Capital on behalf of Mitsui Trust, the deal was one of the most popular yet to emerge. The offering is the latest in a line-up that so far this year has included issues from Toyo Trust, Asahi Bank and Sumitomo Trust.

SALOMON Brothers and SBC Warburg Dillon Read/Brunswick have won the mandate to lead manage the forthcoming offering of convertible bonds for Russia's giant electricity concern UES, after a contest which dramatically illustrates the fast-shifting nature of the Russian corporate finance battlefield. A group including DMG/ Goldman Sachs and Renaissance had looked certain to have the deal. However, the victorious firms emerged after a low key invitation to advise the company and the government was transformed into an intense bidding war between six international investment banks.

LEAD manager Commerzbank has launched the DM1.2bn capital increase on behalf of the German steel group Thyssen. The transaction involves the sale of 2.7m ordinary shares without pre-emption rights -- only the second time that a large German issuer has been able to access new equity capital without going first to existing shareholders.

Endowed with a wealth of natural resources and a marketplace of 150m people, the Russian Federation has all the economic potential to rival its military might during the Cold War period. With some estimates of the cost of moving from a centrally planned Communist economy to a free market capitalist one running as high as $400bn over the next 30 years the country will also be the source of the bulk of the debt funding from central and eastern Europe over the coming decades.

As the most unwilling members of the Soviet Union the three Baltic states - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - were consequently the most eager to reassert their independence following the break-up of the USSR.

The break-up of the Soviet Union and its replacement by a much looser grouping of countries, the Commonwealth of Independent States, has been a mixed blessing for many of its members.

BRAZILIAN corporates are lining up to tap the international debt markets on an unprecedented scale, hoping to capitalise on the buoyant sentiment towards Brazil and the hunt by investors for high-yielding assets.

BRAZILIAN borrowers are set to capture centre stage in the booming market for Latin American syndicated credits over the next few months.

WHILE THE world's debt markets were focused on the Republic of Brazil's $3bn 30 year global bond in June, local Brazilian pension funds were being treated to a roadshow of a different kind by the federal government.