Banks

An investigation initiated by Credit Suisse has found no indication that chief executive Tidjane Thiam approved the observation of its former employee Iqbal Khan. Chief operating officer Pierre-Olivier Bouée has resigned after he declared that he alone requested the surveillance.

Sopra Steria, a French consulting and computer services business, has raised €250m of Euro Private Placements (Euro PP).

Trans-Oil, the Moldovan agro-industrial firm, has signed a $150m loan facility with nine lenders, including three development banks.

Merlin Entertainments, the UK-listed theme park operator, has launched a £2.4bn ($2.96bn) loan syndication to back its £5.9bn buyout by a private equity consortium. It is expected to add bonds to the financing package.

Virgin Media launched a refinancing of its $3.4bn senior secured term loan B, with a combined offering across sterling bonds, and euro and dollar loans. The move comes two weeks after Swiss telco Salt proved that bonds could price meaningfully tighter than leveraged loans for the right issuer, and Virgin also saw a strong result.

Österreichische Kontrollbank (OeKB) is moving ahead with its debut socially responsible bond, after meeting investors earlier this month. Meanwhile, a French agency is preparing to showcase its own sustainable programme ahead of its debut benchmark bond.

Suez Water Resources, the US subsidiary of Suez, the French water and waste management company, has issued $375m of US private placements, with the longest note expiring in 40 years — a rarity for dollar PPs.

Alstom, the French maker of railway rolling stock, was the only high grade company to announce any corporate bond activity on Monday, as a public holiday in Germany and the huge flows of the last month kept the new issue market shuttered.

Royal London Mutual Insurance Society came off the back of a successful roadshow to sell £600m of tier two debt in the sterling market this week — a small increase above the amount it had initially expected to raise.

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena is getting ready to sell a new seven year covered bond in euros, in what will be its fifth deal in the currency so far this year.

NRW.Bank has picked a syndicate of three banks to lead its inaugural Sonia-linked floating rate note, as it looks to become the second German agency to issue a public trade in the format.

Kernel, a Ukrainian agriculture company, has returned to the international bond market for the first time in two years, defying the political turmoil developing in Ukraine.