AT THE END of last year, Lehman Brothers held a
client conference on derivatives in Milan. More than half of
Italy's regional authorities sent a senior official to find
out more. That's an impressive turn-out from a group of
issuers that are still in the relatively early stages of their
relationship with the capital markets, let alone doing
anything more sophisticated.
Among those attending was Gianpierro Antonelli, CFO of the
region of Umbria, which last year was the largest of the Italian
regional issuers. He says he enjoyed the Lehman conference but
probably won't be going to the next one this month. "The
instruments Lehman was discussing were very sophisticated and might
be interesting to other types of issuers. As far as we are
concerned though, they have less appeal," Antonelli tells Euromoney
at his office in Perugia, the regional capital.
That morning he had received a more appealing invitation...
