Italy

FIG bond investors had a little more to go at on Wednesday after a slow start to the week, while the market is finding it hard to decide whether a new recapitalisation fund for Italy’s banks is a good thing or not.

Banca Popolare di Vicenza on Thursday launched premarketing for its €1.5bn IPO and capital increase, after a period of uncertainty when UniCredit, the underwriter, had cast doubt on whether it could be completed by the end of April deadline.

Portugal brought a dual tranche syndicated tap this week, in what some bankers felt was a disappointment amid a busy market where every other deal went well — but the leads were quick to defend the trade.

Eni issued a €400m convertible bond on Wednesday that had to be reduced in size and repriced at worse terms for the issuer. The deal was an important test of whether there is still vigour in the spate of equity-neutral convertible bonds following the European Central Bank's unleashing of quantitative easing on the corporate bond market on March 10.

Technogym, the Italian company that is one of the world’s leading makers of gym equipment, launched an IPO on Monday, on the same day that its private equity backer Arle Capital also set out to float Parques Reunidos in Spain (see Syndicated Loans section).

Car parts distributor LKQ is set to become the first US company this year to issue a high yield bond in euros — and more US names may be on their way, bankers say.

An investor relations manager at Banca Popolare di Vicenza told GlobalCapital on Thursday that the bank still intended to launch its IPO in early April, and to complete it by the end of the month. He called a UniCredit statement casting doubt on that timetable unhelpful.

Consolidation has been a perennial theme in Italian finance, but the country has little to show for it. This time is different.

An investor relations manager at Banca Popolare di Vicenza told GlobalCapital on Thursday that the bank still intended to launch its IPO in early April, and to complete it by the end of the month. He called a UniCredit statement casting doubt on that timetable unhelpful.

Investors holding Italian Treasury certificates will not be required to pay the Italian sovereign if the instruments’ floating rate coupons turn negative — an increasingly likely possibility for an older format of the paper.

Consolidation has been a perennial theme in Italian finance, but the country has little to show for it. This time is different.

Banco Popolare and Banca Popolare di Milano will merge to form Italy’s third largest bank by assets, having been granted permission by the European Central Bank on Wednesday evening. The deal may trigger further consolidation in Italy, and is could be a crucial step towards the modernisation of the country’s fragmented banking sector.