Why Everyone Cares About This Italian Exchange
A sale of the MTS bond-trading platform has broad consequences for Europe's capital markets.
It wouldn’t be easy to just throw the Italian Stock Exchange into the deal.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergAt first glance, it’s a tiny deal — a mere formality in unlocking a much bigger transaction to transform the strategy of the London Stock Exchange Group Plc. But there’s a lot at stake in the U.K. bourse’s attempt to sell its holding in Italy’s MTS SpA bond-trading platform. The disposal has consequences not just for the LSE’s rival exchanges, but also for Italy and for Europe’s capital markets.
MTS is a critical piece of European bond-market infrastructure with average daily volumes exceeding 100 billion euros ($119 billion). Its importance is reinforced by the fact that it's the key venue for trading Italian government debt.