Leonteq has launched its first public offerings in Italy. The Swiss provider introduced two express certificates and one inverse bonus certificate, which are available to Italian retail investors via EuroTLX, multilateral trading facility. "Italy is one of the markets in Europe where we plan to increase our footprint and offering," said Marco Occhetti, managing director at Leonteq Securities (Europe) in London.
One of the three products is a US dollar-denominated express certificate linked to the performance of Lafarge, Roche and Swatch. "We aim to help investors in diversifying their currency exposure and expand their geographic scope from predominantly Italian underlyings in the local market," said Occhetti. "European, Swiss and US underlyings can offer diversified and valuable opportunities."
Leonteq's European prospectus was passported into Italy in October 2015 and the company quotes its products on EuroTLX market to provide liquidity. "As we just started our offering to the broad public in Italy, our prospectus currently has a limited amount of payouts," said Occhetti. "It covers most standard structured investment products, such as bonus and discount certificates, autocallables and the capital protected products with participation. If there is an active response from the market, we will further invest in increasing our offering."
The provider has the benefit of a technology platform that means various structured investment products and ideas can be presented to private banks, asset managers and family offices, with a high number of alterations, according to Occhetti. "It's more of a bottom-up approach, rather than top-down," he said.
Leonteq opened up its platform to third party banks, allowing them to manufacture products from their own balance sheet. The platform now offers "products from seven renowned banking partners, such as Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan", said Occhetti.
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