Disease and cure

摘要

Its timing could scarcely have been worse. Bankia, now Spain's fourth-biggest bank, sandwiched its initial public offering into the gap between the release of European banks' stress-test results on July 15th and a summit of European leaders due to take place in Brussels on July 21st (after The Economist went to press). Neither helped. Instead of raising an already-discounted 3.4 billion ($4.8 billion), it settled for 3.1 billion to get the issue away. Its shares slid initially when they debuted on July 20th.