Italy

BPER Banca opened books for its inaugural sale of senior debt on Wednesday, giving investors their first chance to buy into a new issue from a second tier Italian bank during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Italy is launching a new retail product, the BTP Futura, turning to its impressive stock of domestic savings to help finance its recovery. It’s an excellent move, and could be even more valuable to Italy’s recovery from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic than the external support of the European Stability Mechanism.

Trading levels given are bid-side spreads versus mid-swaps and/or an underlying benchmark and bid-yields from the close of business on Monday, June 8. The source for secondary trading levels is ICE Data Services.

Italy’s ministry of economy and finance has announced a new government bond which will be reserved exclusively for retail investors, with the proceeds to fund the measures launched by the government to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic and support the recovery of the country.

UniCredit is only the second Italian bank to have accessed public primary bond markets during the coronavirus pandemic, but other lenders from the periphery of the eurozone are now lining up to bring deals of their own.

The European Central Bank delivered a welcome — and bigger than expected — increase to both the size and scale of its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (Pepp) on Thursday, causing eurozone periphery spreads to ratchet in while staving off concerns of debt sustainability for the moment. Lewis McLellan reports.

Intesa Sanpaolo was able to pick up competitive terms on a new tier two this week, after bringing a deal in the sterling market that had already been wall-crossed and underwritten by Morgan Stanley.

GVS, the Italian manufacturer of masks and filters, has confirmed that it is seeking to list on the Milan stock exchange this month.

Italy once again asserted its market access on Wednesday, raising a staggering €14bn — its biggest single tranche bond ever. The new issue was timed just ahead of Thursday’s ECB meeting, at which the governing council is expected to expand its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (Pepp).

Italy and the European Union will reboot the euro public sector bond market on Wednesday after announcing syndications of new 10 and 15 year bonds, respectively. The deals will come ahead of the European Central Bank’s meeting on Thursday, in which it is widely expected to increase the size of its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (Pepp).

The reopening of Italian equity capital markets gathered pace on Monday night with two block trades with sellers across Europe expected to take advantage of the market conditions with further trades

The supervisory authority for Italian insurance companies (Ivass) has urged Cattolica Assicurazioni to raise €500m of capital before the autumn, having become concerned about a decline in the company's solvency ratios amid Covid-19.