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ABN Amro is coming to market with its first-ever ARM securitization this month. Lehman Brothers will be co-underwriting the deal. The $500 million offering will be backed by 5/1 and 3/1 ARMs. ABN is also bringing to market another $500 million deal backed by fixed-rate mortgages. ABN's Dutch arm is currently considering accessing the MBS market as well.

Dutch RMBS issuance of STReAM I B.V. received its long-term rating last week. Moody's Investors Service designated an Aaa' long-term rating to the 1.3 billion floating-rate tranche of senior class notes. The class A2 floating-rate tranche that amounts to 724 million received an Aaa rating as well. A 61.5 million mezzanine class B tranche was assigned an A1 rating and a 17.5 million junior class C tranche was assigned an A3 rating. The deal is a securitization of Dutch residential mortgage loans originated by Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP.

The Italian treasury announced in early October that it plans to securitize its property portfolio as a way to cut the government's deficit. Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers have been awarded the mandate for the large government Italian CMBS transaction. The first tranche of this deal is expected to be around 7 billion in size. The government has a very large portfolio of commercial property, amounting to around 20 billion.

Credit Lyonnais' synthetic CLO Sirius Finance 2000 Plc had three of its tranches downgraded by Moody's Investors Service last week. Its Class A tranche was downgraded to A1 from Aa2; the class B suffered a downgrade to Baa3 from Baa1 and the Class C was lowered to B3 from Ba2. According to Moody's the downgrades were prompted by two credit events occurring in the reference portfolio.

Unlike other downgrades where the action is prompted by the deterioration of U.S.-based assets, market sources say Sirius is backed by a 100% European CDO pool. This would mark the first time such a pool suffered a credit downgrade.

E-commerce technology solution provider Basis100 Inc. has added a new component to its platform designed to prevent fraud by tracking and reporting multiple "flips" in a short period. The program was designed to go back two years. Indy Mac, recognizing the potential problem of "flips," suggested that the technology be developed.

John Deere Capital Corp. is planning to tap the ABS primary market for an undisclosed amount before the end of October with an equipment loan-backed offering, market sources confirmed. After skipping last year's issuance plans, the company has not been in the market since May of 1999.

Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown will run the books for the company's most recent offering and it has yet to name co-managers. Pricing is expected within the next two weeks.

People

Societe Generale continues strengthening its structured finance teams around the world, adding Jerome Chang to its Hong Kong team. He will work under Andy Lai, managing director and head of SG's financial engineering group. Chang joins the team from Moody's Investors Service.

Miscellaneous

Gladstone Capital Corp., which in August completed its initial public offering, said in a quarterly filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission that it will begin securitizing mezzanine business loans in approximately 12 months to 18 months.

As of it last week, the company reported $72 million worth of non-binding loan commitments in the works. Through its IPO, the company raised approximately $115 million in equity capital.

This week Moody's Investors Service will release a year-to-date CDO transition study, which complements the four-year compilation the rating agency released in April.

Of trends, Moody's notes that downgrade activity is concentrated in the arbitrage cashflow and balance sheet synthetic arenas. The bulk of the downgrades of the cashflow arbitrage deals pertain to the 1997/1998 vintages.

Meanwhile, the agency also last week said that the majority of its rated CDOs will not be significantly impacted by the events of Sept. 11, as most have maintained their industry concentration limits.

Ratings

Guatemala has recently been added to Standard & Poor's realm of Latin American coverage and it has assigned a double-B long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating to the Republic. At the same time, S&P also assigned a double-B rating to Guatemala's planned $325 million bond issue due 2011.The outlook on the long-term ratings is stable.

The rating agency said the assigned ratings are constrained by weak public finances.

Moody's Investors Service has assigned prospective credit ratings to UCI 7 - Fondo de Titulizacin de Activos' $420.5 million MBS transaction. The senior notes received a (P) Aaa rating and a (P)A2 rating to the subordinated series B bonds.

Calendar

Oct. 23-24: Rome, Italy - Information Management Network presents the Italian and Southern European Securitization Conference. For more information, visit www.IMN.org.

Nov. 13: New York, NY - Information Management Network will host Credit Derivatives in 2 Venues. One will be in New York, and one will be in London. The date has yet to be announced for London, however it will be in the Fall of 2001. For more information, visit www.imn.org.

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