Spain has abandoned a giant privatisation of the national lottery at the last minute because the market price was unacceptably low.
The expected October sale of a 30% stake in the lottery, famous for doling out a wealth of prizes in its Christmas draw El Gordo, or the Fat One, would have been the biggest privatisation in Spain's history.
It had been expected to raise up to €7.5 billion to help finance Spain's fast-growing sovereign debt, a major concern of global financial markets.
Managers of the privatisation informed the state lottery only on Wednesday that they were not sure of getting the desired price for a sale, Finance Minister Elena Salgado said.
"Rather than have it valued for less than we had expected and for less than we believe to be the fair value, we decided to delay this listing," she told state radio RNE.
The state had planned to sell the stake in Loterias y Apuestas del Estado to both institutional investors and the public.
"Among individual investors there was and still is an extraordinary interest and among institutional investors too, but at prices that we did not want to accept," Salgado said. Spain would have used the income from the sale to pay down the growing pile of state debt.
But the government was not relying on the sale to meet its ambitious targets to slash the annual shortfall in public spending, Salgado said.
Meanwhile, the Italian Treasury has issued €7.85 billion worth of bonds with sharply higher interest rates, according to the Bank of Italy, signalling renewed discontent on the markets.
