The Italian Government is working hard in order to make Italian SMEs bond (so called minibond) market to take over. ln few days new rules about how asset managers might get guarantee by the public Central Fund of Guarantee (Fondo Centrale di Garanzia) will be published.
The Ministry for Economic Development has prepared a framework that will push asset manager to build a well diversified portfolio of minibonds, member of technical secretary of the Economic Development Ministry, Francesco Pacifici, at a roundtable organized few days ago in Milan by advisory firm Cse-Crescendo whose contents were published by MF-Milano Finanza last June 21st.
“The public guarantee will cover both single issues and the whole minibond portfolio”, Pacifici told. “However, the guarantee on single issues will be lower with respect to the guarantee on the whole portfolio, if the portfolio is well diversified. The latter meaning that single issues should not have a weight on the total portfolio higher than a certain percentage. Obviously a maximum absolute coverage might be offered to each fund”.
At the moment private investors cannot invest in Italian minibonds. Only professional investors can access the Borsa Italiana’s ExtraMot Pro market, “In Germany minibonds have been listed for some years and the market is well developed”, Pacifici added, but stressed that “in the last few months some defaults happened and German private investors have been involved. SOmething that remind us of Cirio and Parmalat’s defaults in Italy a decade ago. We think it is better to avoid private investors entering this market. Maybe in the future some minibonds funds might list themselves on the Italian Stock Exchange and that might be a good way for private investors to access that asset class”.
Funds focusing on Italian minibonds and private debt are now at least 26 with a fundraising target of around 4.5 billion euros (included 500 millions of Fondo Italiano d’Investimento). First closings have reached now more than one billion euros of committments (download here a table with all the figures).
