On the road to Rome

For most of this year, a shortlist of eight international investment banks have been waiting for the City of Rome to announce which of them has won the mandate to restructure its near-E6 billion of debt. What has made this beauty parade so unusual is that Rome specifically asked the banks to first show how they would use derivatives to risk-manage that debt, the largest of any Italian municipal authority or region.

Other Italian cities, notably AA-rated Venice and Florence, have made