Banca Intesa Sanpaolo is engaged in a project aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises: it is a bond issue operation by SMEs which envisages a subsequent securitization through a series of notes intended for institutional investors.
“Our support to SMEs provides a new alternative tool which, successfully developed thanks to a partner like ELITE, helps them acquire more advanced governance and increase their size. The basket bond is Intesa Sanpaolo's new proposal diversified on the basis of the needs and issuing possibilities of individual companies, to access the capital market and also make itself known to institutional investors that our SMEs, precisely because of their small size, could not reach individually", commented Stefano Barrese, head of the Banca dei Territori Division of Intesa Sanpaolo.
The program is called Intesa Sanpaolo Basket Bond and was organized in partnership with Elite, the international platform of the London Stock Exchange Group, born in Italy in 2012, which is responsible for accelerating the growth of innovative SMEs. “We are pleased that Intesa Sanpaolo has chosen ELITE as a partner for this first important alternative finance operation, promoting an innovative tool for the enhancement of virtuous companies in our country” commented Luca Peyrano, CEO of Elite.
The program is structured in several tranches and provides for the subscription of bonds for a total amount of up to 1 billion euro and is aimed at involving around 200 SMEs overall throughout Italy.
The first companies to join the project are Illiria Group, Sigma and Cittadini dell'Ordine Group: Illiria has issued a 10 million euro bond, while Sigma and Cittadini dell'Ordine have issued one for 3 million euro each. The transactions currently under negotiation amount to approximately 70 million euros.
The structuring of the transactions is entrusted to Banca IMI, the investment bank of the Group. The bonds will be entirely subscribed by Intesa Sanpaolo which, subsequently, will be able to place the risk on the market.
