How to accomplish rowspan with XSL-FO?

Todays blog entry will be an open question to any XSL-developer.

Is there a way to use the HTML equivalent 'rowspan' in XSL-FO? I want to display a text with a bigger font in the leftmost column. The colums to the right however should consist of a couple of rows with smaller text.

In HTML this would be written something like this:

<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td rowspan="3" style="font-weight:bold;font-size:14pt">New Text</td>
<td>Value 1</td>
<td>Value 2</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>{someAttribute}</td>
<td>{someOtherAttribute}</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Value 3</td>
<td>Value 4</td>
<td>Value 5</td>
</tr>
</table>

and look like this:

Here is the code for XSL-FO without the new leftmost column.

<xsl:template name="printAddress">
<xsl:param name="subDocument"/>
<fo:table table-layout="fixed" background-color="#e0e0e0" keep-with-next.within-page="always">

<fo:table-column column-width="7.0cm"/>
<fo:table-column column-width="7.0cm"/>
<fo:table-column column-width="2.0cm"/>

<fo:table-body>


<fo:table-row keep-with-previous="always">
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block>Value 1</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block>Value 2</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block/>
</fo:table-cell>
</fo:table-row>

<fo:table-row keep-with-previous="always">
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block>
<xsl:value-of select="$subDocument/someAttribute"/>
</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block>
<xsl:value-of select="$subDocument/someOtherAttribute"/>
</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block/>
</fo:table-cell>
</fo:table-row>

<fo:table-row keep-with-previous="always">
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block>value 3</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block>Value 4</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
<fo:table-cell margin-left="0.2cm" padding-before="0.1cm" padding-after="0.1cm">
<fo:block>Value 5</fo:block>
</fo:table-cell>
</fo:table-row>
</fo:table-body>
</fo:table>
</xsl:template>

The HTML-equivalent for the above code would be to only remove this row from the provided HTML code at the top:

How would the XSL-FO code look like to provide the same look as the figure at the top?