BTp Valore kicks off with momentum: orders over 6 billion on first day
Since May 2023, the share of public debt in private hands has risen by 142.2 billion: retail bonds were bought for 96.4 billion
The BTp value starts with momentum. Demand for the new issue that the Treasury launched on the market this morning slightly exceeded EUR 6 billion, with more than 176 thousand contracts signed. The transaction is expected to close next Friday, unless it is closed early. It exceeded the BTp Valore issued last October, which on the first day of issue had totalled orders for 5.4 billion.
At the end of May 2023, five days before the debut of the first BTp entitled "Valore", Italy's savers held 310.8 billion of Italia's public debt. By last November, after the last offering in this strand so far, their portfolio had risen to 453 billion, 142.2 billion more than two and a half years earlier. In the meantime, the six rounds of government bonds designed for households and small investors had amassed 96.4 billion, a sum worth 67.8% of the increase recorded over the same period by the total of BTp in the securities accounts of this market area.
This pair of calculations is enough to understand how central the role of BTp Valore is in pushing that rediscovered passion of Italian savers for government bonds, on which the government has staked a great deal to broaden the Treasury's customer portfolio. The point is not political, as shown in the same period by the even sharper rise in the share of debt in the hands of foreign investors, but practical, linked as it is to the need to find stable landings for an issuer that every year is called upon to place more than 350 billion euro, and has to reckon with the end of the long period in which it was the central banks that were the main source of public debt.
The line of fiscal rigour from which the Minister for the Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti has not shifted in recent years, at the cost of displeasing more than one of his majority partners, has also contributed a great deal to strengthening demand for government bonds, which has racked up a series of records both domestically and internationally. This also explains the new-found liveliness of the BTp People, who have been able to find attractive yields in BTp bonds against an effective risk in the vicinity of zero.
In this race, which in the last two and a half years has brought from 11% to 14.5% the share of debt in the hands of Italian savers, the 'Value' family built up at the Treasury to give a recognisable physiognomy to the offers for small investors has in fact probably had a greater weight than that 67.8% mentioned above. Because it is true that in the 3.3 million purchases accumulated by the six offers made so far (the calculation also includes the BTp Più of February 2025), purchases by savers who bought a new security after having sold a previous BTp Valore in advance can also be hidden. But the phenomenon appears marginal, while the entry 'other residents' in Bankitalia's census on the distribution of public debt also includes non-financial household companies, which, however, are not part of the pure retail market. In the context of households and savers, who represent the reach of BTp Valore, total funding may therefore be worth more than 70% of the additional share accumulated by retail over these two and a half years.
