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The US high-yield market has been in retreat for the past 18 months, some would say even longer, since the near-meltdown in the credit markets after Russia defaulted on its domestic debt in August 1998. Issuance so far this year is 49% down on 1999 levels, and it's been one of the longest periods of a Xat to negative performance in the asset class since the US market's revival in the early 1990s.

Denver-based Level 3 Communications set new records in the high-yield market in late February with a $2.2 billion bond deal that included the largest ever high-yield offering in euros. Not only did Level 3 raise e800 million, the largest ever non-dollar high-yield bond issue, it went on to raise more than $5 billion on the same day through parallel equity and convertible bond issues. "This really was a windfall deal for the borrower," says one of the co-lead managers. "I think Level 3 really surprised themselves with how much they could raise in the markets. This is certainly a landmark for them."

In March 2000, Indonesian company Asia Pulp&Paper (APP) was the Wrst Asian bond issuer to return to the markets after the Asian Wnancial crisis, with a $403 million 10-year bond deal issued in the name of APP China, but guaranteed by the group. Just weeks before the bond launch, another APP subsidiary, PT Indah Kiat, was also the Wrst Indonesian borrower to tap the international loan markets after the crisis in early 2000 with a reWnancing of a $400 million bank facility that was also guaranteed by the parent company.

Edgar Ancona and Bruce Foster were in Japan last month. This is nothing unusual for the treasurer and his vice-president of Household Finance, although a casual observer might wonder what a largely domestic US consumer Wnance company is doing over there.

It’s been a tough year for many borrowers in the international capital markets. Corporate issuers in particular have fallen quickly from grace, having been the market’s darlings a year ago. Now fixed income investors across the world are increasingly risk-averse. Certain sectors of the primary markets, US high yield for example, are very difficult to access. In response to these troubles, many of those borrowers that bankers and investors have nominated to be awarded for their efforts in the past 12 months have reverted to a strategy first made popular by Fannie Mae two years ago. They are striving to produce large, liquid benchmark issues that will at least give investors the comfort that they can easily trade in and out. Where Fannie Mae, our borrower of the year, has led, others, such as Ford, our best corporate borrower, and even smaller issuers such as Brazil, our best sovereign, and IADB, best supranational, have followed.The best corporate, sovereign, financial and securitization borrowers from Europe, central and eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America

Just two years ago a corporate such as Ford Motor Credit would have needed to issue a plethora of diVerent bonds across a variety of markets to meet its substantial financing needs. Now, though, less than a year after launching its global landmark securities programme, Ford has already raised $18.6 billion with just three issues.

Korea Development Bank has done more than any other Asian borrower to set new benchmarks in the market in the wake of Asia's economic rehabilitation. Despite an increasing number of Asian issuers, many Asian deals have so far been somewhat limp. KDB has been the exception and has kept a consistently high proWle in the markets with a string of successful and innovative deals, many of which set benchmarks that will pave the way for other returning Asian borrowers.

Largest banks by country

Germany's Rheinhyp has convincingly kept its lead this year in the covered bond sector with a string of deals put together by a dedicated structured Wnance team that has only been in place for just over a year. Rheinhyp's securitization of its European commercial mortgages across several countries broke new ground in Europe's cross-border structured Wnance markets. Even though the legal hurdles for such a deal might have proved insurmountable, Rheinhyp and Barclays Capital together found a structure that should ignite interest from other asset-backed issuers to use similar synthetic structures to place pan-eurozone portfolio deals into the market.

What's the signiWcance of Merrill Lynch's decision to appoint a British banker, Kevan Watts, in London as co-head of its global investment banking group? "The location is clearly a large part of it but my background outside the US also played a role," Watts says. Watts joined Merrill in 1981 and spent 17 years toiling for it outside the US. He worked in advisory and Wnance for UK clients in the 1980s and recalls Xoating Euromoney in 1986 at £4.60 a share. "It's been a very successful company," he says.

In January 2000, Turkish leasing company Garanti Leasing became the Wrst entity to beneWt from securitizing Turkish domestic assets.

Competition for telecom capital in Europe may be Werce, but Vodafone has taken the massive funding required to turn itself into Europe's pre-eminent mobile phone service provider in its stride with a series of jaw-dropping deals. Following a $14 billion bank Wnancing to support its acquisition of AirTouch, it stunned the markets in December by raising a total of e30 billion in the loan markets in the middle of its hostile takeover of Germany's Mannesmann. Not only did Vodafone executives face convincing their own shareholders and Mannesmann's reluctant shareholders to accept the takeover deal, they also had to bring in new and existing investors.