After Big Meal, Time For Digestion

In the pipeline, the investment-grade sector is looking scanty in comparison to last week.

But on the lower end of the investment-grade spectrum, interest is said to be building for Genuity's $2 billion offering via J.P. Morgan Chase and Salomon Smith Barney. While price and structure details remain shady at this point, the deal, a private (144a) offering, is heard to be on deck for early this week.

The firm, which is rated triple-B-plus by Standard & Poor's and Baa2 by Moody's Investors service, is a spinoff from GTE, separated from the firm to satisfy regulators concerned about the monopolistic impact of its merger with Bell Atlantic.

But despite its mainstream business origins and connections, the firm, with its "Black Rocker" ad campaign and its connection to the Internet may offer some psychological relief at least to the funding market for tech companies.

Also on deck for this week is that perennially cash poor old world Ma' Bell. And British Telecommunications is said to be planning a multi-currency offering, largely in euros and sterling, albeit definitely not one as large as last month's record-setting dollar- denominated deal.

In junk, a wireless telecommunications provider in the southeastern U.S. operating as part of the AT&T Wireless Network, will privately sell $250 million of 10-year senior subordinated notes through J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The debt is rated B3 by Moody's and triple-C-plus by S&P.

Also on deck is perfume concern French Fragrances, which plans $160 million of b1/B+ bonds of unspecified maturity at any time now. The financing will be an apparent support for the firm's October agreement to buy Unilever's Elizabeth Arden line for $225 million.

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