Permanent Master Issuer
In May HBOS broke the ice of the frozen residential mortgage-backed securities market by placing the first RMBS entirely with third-party investors since the credit crunch set in. Placing the £500 million ($1 billion) deal with outside investors bucked the trend of firms retaining bonds to use as collateral for repurchase agreements with central banks. The bank acted as originator, arranger, seller and servicer. Citi and UBS were joint lead managers. Robert Plehn heads securitization and covered bonds at HBOS.
Excalibur Funding No. 1
Lehman Brothers boldly put together the third of only three European commercial real estate CDOs even as the market was roiled by change. "This type of deal is very rare and this one has the key strengths of high granularity and geographical diversity," said one analyst familiar with the deal. "It will certainly be a long time before we see another one like it." The E2.9 billion ($4.5 billion) Excalibur Funding No. 1 comprised pan-European commercial real estate assets, senior/whole loans, development and land loans, commercial mortgage-backed securities and corporate bank loans originated by Lehman Brothers International. The deal was also notable for its assets being spread across many countries, including Germany, Sweden, the U.K., France, Spain, Estonia, Finland and the Netherlands. London-based Hatfield Phillips International is the servicer and LaSalle Global Trust Services is the trustee.
Driver Five
In January this year, Volkswagen Bank opened the frozen credit markets a crack with the first publicly marketed European securitization since the credit crunch. Driver Five GmbH featured E1.47 billion ($2.16 billion) of notes across two classes. The transaction was arranged by ABN AMRO and Volkswagen Financial Services. Despite vastly different market conditions, Drive Five retained much of the structure of the four preceding deals, emphasizing the soundness of the series as a whole.