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BANK Labôuchere's pioneering securitisation of share leasing contracts, LABS 1, roared off the books in 20 minutes on Friday, despite coming at an unpopular maturity for Dutch institutions. Lease Assets Backed Securities BV sold Dfl 400m of triple A rated 5% bonds maturing in January 2002. Dutch pension funds and insurance companies bought 70% of the 4 1/4 year paper, even though they normally invest at the seven to 10 year tenor.

* Asian Infrastructure Fund Advisors Ltd (AIFAL) has appointed Ted Rule as its new managing director. Currently the head of the group's transport portfolio, Rule will assume day-to-day running of the Hong Kong-based office. AIFAL's founding managing director Will Liley will take a more active role in investor relations as company chairman. * Deutsche Morgan Grenfell revealed this week that it is to restructure its Asian equity operations, relocating over a dozen key staff from Singapore to Hong Kong.

THE CHINESE government has given permission for the first international bond offering by a pure corporate entity, underlining its commitment to allow state owned industries greater financial autonomy. Bao Shan Iron & Steel, an unlisted company that is one of the PRC's most efficient and high quality steel producers, has mandated JP Morgan for a $300m rule 144a issue.

TAIWAN'S majority state-owned development bank, Chiao Tung is preparing a first subordinated debt offering from the republic. With the international debt markets traditionally seeing very little activity out of the country because of restrictive withholding taxes, bankers said that the prospective US-targeted offering stands to set an important benchmark.

* A widening in 10 year Deutschmark bond spreads this week could make the pricing of the Asian Development Bank's forthcoming European currency benchmark global transaction wider than expected. Comparable triple-A spreads moved out by three to four basis points this week, with price talk on the ADB deal moving from 8bp earlier in the week to 12bp yesterday (Thursday).

AT THE end of the first week of roadshows in Asia, demand for the jumbo flotation of China Telecom is already said to be building strongly, underlining growing concern that the Hong Kong authorities are unprepared to cope with the scale of the domestic IPO. "They are understandably very, very nervous," said one banker. "Although a number of proposals are under consideration, nothing definite has yet been put in place." Keen to avoid the interbank liquidity crunch which has characterised previous China-related IPO's -- most notably that of Beijing Enterprises -- the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and four local banks charged with receiving retail applications have been working on a number of solutions to prevent an excessive level of funds becoming tied up in the banking system.

MORGAN Stanley Dean Witter has further bolstered its Asian investment banking operations with the appointment of Michael Dee, managing director of debt capital markets in Europe, as its new head of debt capital markets for non-Japan Asia. The relocation of one of the Euromarket's best known practitioners underscores the US firm's desire to protect and enhance its Asian franchise against growing competition in the region.

CITICORP HAS scooped a second mandate for a novel securitisation by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Following its success last month with a $225m telecoms-related securitisation for Paktel in association with ABN AMRO, the bank was awarded the mandate this week for a $300m to $500m securitisation of overseas workers' remittances. With Deutsche Morgan Grenfell likely to be brought on board as joint lead, bankers said that the issue will probably emerge in about six months' time and will follow a bridging loan scheduled to be put in place first.

THE KOREAN debt markets received some further measure of relief this week with the completion of a $463m three tranche offering for leading corporate Samsung Electronics. Following recent deals for the Korea Development Bank (KDB) and Export Import Bank of Korea (Kexim), the success of the US targeted deal underscored investors' willingness to pick up Korean paper provided the credit is right and the issuer is prepared to accept market reality.

INDICATIVE terms for the eagerly anticipated credit-enhanced convertible for First International Computers (FIC) will be released today (Friday) by lead manager UBS. Scheduled to be completed on an accelerated basis, the fact that the $200m issue will be the first from Asia backed by a triple-A basis has drawn keen attention. With launch on Monday for final pricing on Thursday, bankers said that the five year premium redemption, zero coupon structure has already drawn very positive pre-marketing feedback.

DEFYING regional currency turmoil and the precipitous drop of the Jakarta stock market, a $471m offering by Gulf Indonesia has been hailed a great success by Asian equity players. Despite widespread grumbling at the use of a pot system to allocate the 24.15m share Goldman Sachs led deal, bankers said that the ability of a Asean-based company to appeal to international equity investors in the current market climate was nothing short of astounding.

SUMITOMO Bank issued the third of three ¥50bn batches of asset backed commercial paper last week from its offshore vehicle Pegasus Funding Corp. The two month issue, together with a three month deal the previous week, were intended to improve the bank's BIS ratio in time for the reporting deadline on September 30, the end of the first fiscal half year. No more paper will be sold from the ¥500bn programme until at least December, when the end of the fiscal year in March begins to come in range of the programme's maximum maturity.