Italy

Italy’s Fondo Atlante is now operational, having been approved by Italian market regulator Consob and reached the threshold of raising €4bn from its backers. At the same time, the bookbuild has been launched for the IPO of Banca Popolare di Vicenza.

Buzzi Unicem, the BB+ rated Italian cement and concrete group, on Wednesday issued €500m of seven year notes with minimal support from high yield funds.

UniCredit published a statement today clarifying certain aspects of its sub-underwriting agreement for the IPO of Banca Popolare di Vicenza with Fondo Atlante, the fund being set up by Italian financial institutions with the encouragement of the finance ministry.

UBI Banca has begun marketing a tier two transaction, which will be the first capital sale from an Italian bank since January.

An increase in swap spreads at the short end of the curve drove public sector issuers to focus their attention on shorter maturities in the dollar market this week.

Italy enticed investors out the curve on Tuesday with its first ever 20 year euro benchmark, offering a pick-up of around 40bp over where its 15 year benchmark — a more traditional pricing point for the sovereign — was trading in secondaries.

Banca Popolare di Vicenza’s mainly retail shareholders will be left owning just 0.66% of the bank if its €1.5bn IPO is priced at the bottom end of the price range. That the IPO and capital increase would be highly dilutive had been clear for some time, but the publication of the price range today makes it possible to put numbers on this for the first time.

The first task of the Fondo Atlante, the Italian bank rescue fund that politicians and financial leaders have put together over the past few weeks, moved a step closer to achievement today, with the announcement that it will sub-underwrite the IPO of Banca Popolare di Vicenza — as long as regulators agree.

Italy’s strongest banks are to contribute to a fund that will back-stop the capital raises of weaker lenders, in a deal brokered by the government that has drawn scepticism from many investors, but optimism from others. Tom Porter reports.

Italy doesn’t mince its words on troubled assets. Loans in danger of becoming non-performing are dubbed ‘incagli’, which means ‘run aground’. When they become the ‘NPLs’ we hear so much about, they are ‘sofferenze’, which simply means suffering.

When it comes to Italian banks, pessimists are not in short supply. Indeed, to be bullish on this sector could be considered contrarian, or even foolhardy, given its parlous state. Asset quality is the overriding problem — Italy’s banks have €360bn of non-performing loans on their balance sheets, about a third of the eurozone’s total.

Buzzi Unicem, the Italian cement and concrete group, is planning a European-targeted bond issue to tackle €510m of debt maturities this year.