Many Italian banks fail to start trading Monday
Several Italian banks failed to start trading on Monday as fears over a Greek debt default induced many investors to shed peripheral stocks, including Italian, with banks suffering the most.
Sales orders on Italian stocks, in particular financial stocks, piled up before the market opening. At the start, the sales orders were so numerous that the system couldn’t manage to process them, something that often happens when specific news causes a sell-off on a stock.
Theoretical prices for Italian banks–the prices at which they would have started trading–hovered around losses of 8% to 10% at the beginning of the trading session.
UniCredit SpA and Intesa Sanpaolo managed to start trading some time after the market opened, but were suspended immediately, accumulating losses of around 6% compared with Friday’s closing prices.
On Sunday, Italy’s banking lobby head Antonio Patuelli dismissed fears of contagion on Italian lenders, saying the country’s banks’ direct exposure to Greece was less than EUR1 billion.
Source: Marketwatch – Many Italian banks fail to start trading Monday
