Prosecutors are ready to ask a Milan court to bring charges of misleading the market against some of the world's largest investment banks as part of investigations into the collapse of Parmalat.

The request, which could come shortly, brings closer the prospects of a trial involving Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Nextra, the asset management arm of Italy's Banca Intesa.

Neither the prosecutors nor the banks would comment yesterday, but people close to the investigations said that the request for charges had been prepared but for now was stalled by a separate procedural motion in a different strand of the investigations.

That motion, which is the subject of a hearing tomorrow, seeks to move proceedings out of Milan and could add a further layer of complication to the legal process.

Lawyers for one of the investigated individuals have said that since a Milanese judge had claimed to be one of tens of thousands damaged by the scandal and had been seeking restitution, the city's courts should not be a venue for the trials of people involved.

Under Italian law, the prosecutors do not file charges themselves. A judge has to consider their case in a series of hearings. That process is advanced in the investigations of Bank of America and some of Parmalat's former auditors, though no charges have yet been brought.

Milan prosecutors have been investigating allegations that the banks helped mislead investors by assisting the dairy company in making allegedly false communications to the market and regulators while seeking to raise billions of euro in a succession of bond issues. - (Financial Times Service)