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THE BRAZILIAN government was forced to delay its Telebras privatisation plans on the eve of announcing the final mandate winner this week when a consortium including Lehman Brothers and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson filed a complaint about the score received by a rival bidding group including Salomon Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Bankers will now have to wait another three weeks to find out who won the fee bidding phase of the process.

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Signing of the £1.5bn facility for Reuters Holdings should take place on February 12. Arranger Chase, by bringing 16 banks into the transaction at either £125m or £75m participations, has achieved an oversubscription of around 20%. Of the participant banks, 10 took the top slot.

* ABB International Finance NV

UNPRECEDENTED levels of activity in the fixed rate dollar market continued with over $11bn raised in the first four days of this week -- including the largest ever dollar Eurobonds from the World Bank and its sister organisation, the IFC. The supranationals launched benchmark transactions on Tuesday, adding to the $4bn issued by US agency Fannie Mae in the global market the day before. Total fixed rate dollar issuance this year stands at over $39bn, some $13bn more than in the first five weeks of 1997.

* Banesto

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INVESTORS starved of Polish sovereign risk devoured $600m and Ffr1.25bn of synthetic government bonds this week as France's export credit agency securitised Polish Paris Club debt. The Polish state incurred obligations to the Compagnie Française d'Assurance pour le Commerce Extérieur (Coface) when it defaulted on payments for exports from French companies in the early 1990s.

* Floating rate dollar investors this week eagerly greeted one of the first FASIT securitisations, as Nomura Asset Capital Corp launched $2.05bn of Euro/144A notes through Nomura and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Nomura Depositor Trust Series 1998 ST-1 sold $1.209bn of triple-A rated senior notes with a 2.9 year average life and four classes of bonds with 4.96 year average lives rated double-A, single-A, triple-B and triple-B minus.

SBC WARBURG Dillon Read has launched a £250.33m securitisation of shared appreciation mortgages, its second packaging of the asset class, but the first to attempt to tap into US demand. Unlike the first deal, launched in July 1997, this transaction contains a 144A provision under which, according to SBC Warburg analyst Pratik Shah, some 30% of the deal is likely to be sold. That extra pool of demand may be needed: the Bank of Scotland has already announced that it will issue up to a total of £1bn of similar bonds this year, with the underlying product accounting for around a third of the bank's new mortgage product this year.

The consistent pricing of derivative products involving the joint realizations of a collection of forward rates requires the specification of the covariance matrix between the various underlying rates.

Australia's domestic bond market is enjoying rapid growth. The build-up of investible funds at a time of a declining government borrowing requirement is creating a need for new forms of fixed income assets.