The snowballing effect of Parmalat at the end of 2003 ushered in an inauspicious start to 2004 for investors in Italian debt capital markets. Coined ‘Europe’s Enron’, the Parmalat scandal broke in December 2003 amid allegations of false accounting, financial manipulation, insider trading and financial fraud.
A number of Parmalat executives have been placed under arrest. Parmalat’s gross debt is currently reported to be more than e14.3bn (£9.6bn), a multiple of the company’s assets. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that Parmalat “engaged in one of the largest and most brazen corporate financial frauds in history”.
