Italy

The IPOs of two payments companies being marketed in Europe have moved ahead in the past 48 hours. Italian firm Nexi has set a price range, while Dubai-based Network International has attracted Mastercard as a cornerstone investor. Equity investors are now assessing whether to pay high multiples for future growth.

Italy’s Mediobanca made light work of its return to the senior unsecured market on Tuesday, launching a well subscribed €500m bond with a negative new issue premium, according to a banker on the deal.

Investors looking at the multi-billion euro listing of Italian payments company Nexi are largely comfortable with the country’s political environment, focusing more on whether its private equity sellers will seek too high a price.

In this round-up, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bank of China to issue a Rmb5bn Panda bond, Bank of Beijing and ING agreed to launch a JV and the Shanghai tech board published detailed information on nine IPO candidates.

In this round-up, Chinese president Xi Jinping starts a five-day visit to Europe, the eighth and ninth rounds of trade talks are scheduled and local government bonds will soon be available at bank counters.

Rating: Baa3/BBB/BBB

Crédit Agricole Italia’s eight year covered bond has the highest BondMarker average score of any deal issued so far this month. The transaction is closely followed by deals from Banco BPI and BPER Banka. Intesa Sanpaolo is leading among the six Italian covered bonds issued this year, but the survey is still open and some marks could yet improve.

In this round-up China’s new Foreign Investment Law is tipped to spark a wave of capital inflows, the US and China attack each other’s human rights records, Bank of China (BOC) expects onshore bond yields to fall but offshore ones to stabilise

Nexi, the Italian payments company, launched its long-awaited flotation on the Italian stock exchange on Monday — and investors are already eager to take a slice of the listing.

Intesa Sanpaolo took advantage of the search for yield among Japanese investors this week to make its second outing in the Tokyo Pro-Bond market.

UniCredit raised €1bn of additional tier one (AT1) capital on Tuesday without paying a premium to its investors. It had been encouraged to open a new deal after the financial institutions bond market jumped in the run-up to a series of votes on Brexit by the UK parliament.

BPER Banca issued an exceptionally well subscribed Italian covered bond and, although it originally planned to issue a €500m no-grow, it took the unusual step of increasing the deal size to €600m "as a token gesture on behalf of the leads".