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The EIB lends more than any other multilateral but receives far less scrutiny. Many people don't know if it is a bank or an EU institution. Critics say it is unsupervised, opaque and unwilling to deal with conflicts of interest and misdirected lending. Now, stung by a critical report prepared for the European Parliament, EIB president Philippe Maystadt is having to fight hard to defend the bank.

Rising volumes of primary issuance in Europe mask the fact that most companies are not selling shares to fund growth or to restructure.

GlaxoSmithKline used careful timing to make the most of the dearth of jumbo dollar corporate issues so far this year.

Cheap, profitable and geared for growth - that is how Moscow?s investment bankers are selling Russia?s burgeoning steel sector. Years of investment are bearing fruit and high international prices are boosting bottom lines. But the big-four steel companies are getting too big for their boots. As they turn their attention to landing large international contracts, the leading companies are getting ready to step into the big league by getting their corporate governance act together and analysts are expecting a round of mergers.

Credit provision is once again becoming a dangerous game. Tight bond spreads on high-grade, high-yield or emerging-markets paper are one obvious warning sign that investors? desperate chase for yield has overcome any sensible discrimination about underlying credit risk. But the clearest indication that institutions have failed to learn from the last recession and credit crunch is in the syndicated loan market.

Norilsk Nickel's Gold Fields deal is the largest single Russian cross-border merger and the second-biggest single foreign investment in South Africa. It needed a record-breaking unsecured Russian loan.

The accession of 10 new states to the EU on May 1 provided an opportunity to reflect on the success of the European project. For a continent riven by centuries of war and rivalry to build peace and prosperity is a momentous achievement.

The noose tightened around oil company Yukos?s neck last month and bankruptcy loomed large only weeks before the trial of its former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was due to start.

When the European Parliament approved the Investment Services Directive, including the controversial Article 27, hearts sank across the City of London.

IAS39 problems and solutions

The latest new name in European banking, Calyon, becomes fully operational this month. It?s the product of the 2003 merger of Crédit Agricole Indosuez and Crédit Lyonnais, bringing together their investment banking and capital markets businesses. The rebranding and relaunch are being kept relatively low profile, mainly because the new name is already well known among clients. Indeed it is backdated, having been used to refer to the bank since January.

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