Lehman Brothers was a bookrunner on a European equity-linked issue for the first time this year as the US bank sold a €350m ($343m) exchangeable bond for Olivetti, the holding company that controls Telecom Italia.

Lehman has close links with the Italian telecoms group. The US bank was one of the bookrunners of Olivetti's €2.4bn convertible issue last November that was part of the Italian company's rights issue, alongside seven Italian banks and BNP Paribas, JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch.