A long look at the short end

There is an increasing demand in Europe for short-dated issuance, which in turn has pushed swaps to the fore. Laurence Neville reports

Italy’s BTP September 2008 inflation-linked bond, launched in September 2003, generated e11 billion in demand for a e7 billion deal, and it has been tapped twice since. Although it may not yet have heralded a deluge of similarly dated issuance in the European market, its success indicates the scale of demand at the short end of the curve, defined as around five years in the inflation market. And it has given the swap market a forceful kick-start.

As Volker Wellmann, London-based head of European