- you can't cash a ticket in a one-horse race on the 31st of the month if your rent is due.*
It is, of course, of no real concern that Telefónica has decided to delay the IPO of its Atento unit because of miserable equity market conditions everywhere. But Bankia is another matter. Planning to begin its own initial public offering next week with a July 13th target for the first trading day, the unholy, very large and tremendously needy alliance of a variety of cajas de ahorros - led by Caja Madrid - is on the verge of postponing the event until the autumn for the very same reason.
This is something Rodrigo Rato wanted to avoid, because it will then take place into the teeth of what will be one of Europe's biggest, and likely the most appealing, IPO of 2011 - that of Loterías y Apuestas del Estado. The Spanish national lottery operator, most famous for the annual December drawing of 'el gordo', is said to be going to offer some 10 billion euros of itself to the public. Resistant to the vagaries of economic growth and decline (one really has to live here to understand how that works, although the photo shows the aftermath of a win in a lucky town), LAE seems to be promising to disburse around 80 percent of its profits in the dividend. The real feature, however, is that the payout will be made on a monthly basis. As if Bankia didn't have to wonder how selling its stock to its own depositors could truthfully be described as progress in the battle for capital, a Spanish standard-issue 5 percent yield from the lottery would provide serious competition to everybody's entry in the term deposit wars.
*Those still waiting for another 2000-style stock market crash might consider waiting until the industrialized world's real beggars, the pension funds, are all in. According to Pension Pulse, UK pension funds are currently 19 points short of their year 2000 record allocation of 74 percent of assets. Looks high enough for at least a minor setback, though.
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