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ABN Amro and Commerzbank are preparing a $200m bridge loan for Evraz Holding to back the steel producer and mining company's Eu240m November acquisition of the Czech company Vitkovice Steel.

Having established themselves in the international bond markets, Russian and CIS issuers are now exploring what they can do there. In 2005 the banking sector made the most headway, with the arrival of lower tier two capital in Russia and tier one in Kazakhstan. Duncan Kerr charts these achievements and examines the prospects for 2006.

Saffron Walden, Herts & Essex Building Society has signed its £30m debut syndicated loan via mandated lead arrangers Barclays, BayernLB and Danske Bank. Each bank committed £10m in the club deal.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week ordered former stockbroker Daniel Calugar to pay a civil penalty of $50m to settle a charge of fraud. It was its largest ever fine for an individual in its investigations of mutual fund late trading or market timing. The SEC said that between 2001 and 2003 Calugar made $175m by trading mutual funds after the market's close, at 4pm Eastern Standard Time. Security Brokerage, the firm that Calugar owned, is alleged to have created false records that listed the time of the trades as 3.59pm.

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Citigroup, Deutsche and JP Morgan have launched general syndication for the loan backing the merger of Ireland's Jefferson Smurfit and Dutch company Kappa Packaging, now called Smurfit Kappa. The bank meeting was held on Wednesday. Four tickets are on offer — a Eu100m ticket for a fee of 125bp, Eu75m for 100bp, Eu40m for 80bp and Eu25m for 60bp.

BNP Paribas approached eight banks this week during senior syndication of a $750m loan for AzACG, a subsidiary of State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (Socar).

Nedbank has mandated Calyon, Royal Bank of Scotland and SMBC to arrange a $200m three year loan that pays a margin of 20bp over Libor. Between 15 and 20 banks are expected to join the deal during general syndication, which will be launched imminently.

With EU membership on the horizon, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia — as well as the other Balkan countries — are attracting growing interest from bond investors seeking to revive the convergence play that rode so well with the last wave of accession countries. But while appetite was strong for fresh debt from the region, issuance failed to match it in 2005.