Yesterday saw the end of the Australian government's wholesale guarantee scheme for Australian ADIs' large deposits and wholesale funding. The demise of the scheme was announced by Treasurer, Wayne Swan, on February 7.At the time it was expected that there would be a rush of bond issuance before the guarantee ended, although this did not quite eventuate. In the domestic market a further $5.7 billion of bonds were issued, that we are aware of, and there has been no guaranteed issuance in international markets all year. The volume of guaranteed issuance seen in the domestic market since the end of the scheme was announced needs to be viewed in the context of the overall volume of issuance since implementation. The government's website shows total bond issuance to the end of February stood at $139.1 billion. Add to that the additional issuance seen in March and the total for the scheme comes to $142.1 billion. So the 'rush' of issuance amounted to four per cent of total issuance.Nonetheless, the composition of the issuance is interesting. Arab Bank Australia and ME Bank issued within just days of the scheme's demise being announced. Both said that this was coincidental, with the issues having been planned well in advance. This would be correct, but it was the first issue by Arab Bank even though it had established an MTN program in 2005, and only the second issue by ME Bank (the first was also guaranteed).ING Bank (Australia) was the largest beneficiary, raising a total of $2.6 billion during those last few weeks, followed by Bank of Queensland, which raised $1.0 billion. Next was Citigroup Australia, reported to have privately placed $500 million of bonds on Tuesday, and then came the smaller issuers such as Investec (Australia) ($300 million), Heritage Building Society ($200 million) and Bananacoast Community Credit Union, which raised $40 million last Friday.Over the life of the guarantee scheme and among the smaller ADIs, Suncorp-Metway was by far the greatest beneficiary issuing $3.75 billion of guaranteed bonds in the domestic market and a whopping $11.3 billion internationally. In fact, it was the only one to issue offshore.Bank of Queensland also issued $3.75 billion in the domestic market, ME Bank, $1.0 billion, and AMP Bank $0.9 billion. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank refused to avail itself, stating that the scheme was too expensive for smaller institutions. This didn't stop Heritage Building Society, which issued a total $600 million of bonds and Bananacoast Community Credit Union, mentioned above.   Bananacoast was the only credit union to issue bonds but credit unions were extensive users of the large deposit guarantee, of which a total of $14.1 billion was guaranteed, to the end of February.As alluded to above, the domestic operations of international banks were significant beneficiaries, with $26.1 billion of domestic bond issuance guaranteed in all. The largest of these was ING Bank (Australia) at $9.1 billion, followed by the Australian branches of Bank of Scotland, at $5.4 billion, and Royal Bank of Scotland, at $4.1 billion, ABN