Clifford Chance
The French NEU CP market now open to Italian issuers
29 August 2023
In a press release dated 3 April 2023, Euroclear France announced that "Italian issuers can issue their commercial paper via the French CSD1's Negotiable European Commercial Paper (NEU CP) service".
This should enable Italian issuers to use the French NEU CP market, the largest commercial paper market of the Euro zone. Italian issuers should now be able to issue "Negotiable European Commercial Paper" ("NEU CP", pronounced "New CP"), which corresponds to the trade name of French law money market instruments having a maturity of one year or less.
Despite recent French law efforts aiming to facilitate the access to the NEU CP market, it remained difficult for Italian issuers to issue on such market due to the lack of the necessary
infrastructure to secure the exemption from Italian withholding tax. Clifford Chance has been actively involved to help resolving this issue along with the relevant financial intermediaries.
