Investor urges ECB to block €2.5bn rights issue at Italian bank
A London-based investor has called for the European Central Bank to block a €2.5bn rights issue at Monte dei Paschi di Siena, arguing the Italian bank is indirectly buying its own shares in the offering.
MPS is paying an unusually high fee of €125mn to eight underwriters on the capital raising, even though the Italian state has committed to buy 64 per cent of the issue and much of the rest has been guaranteed by other investors.
“It is unclear, to say the very least, that a private investor in the position of MPS would provide an underwriting fee of such a scale to others in order to ensure the purchase of unsubscribed shares, and directly or indirectly contribute to the purchaser,” law firm RPC wrote in a letter this week to the ECB’s supervisory board.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli
