Covered Bonds

Moody’s has assigned a triple-A rating to Series 1 of Landesbank Berlin’s (LBB) Daheim 2 structured covered bond programme.

Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, yesterday (Tuesday) told the Reuters Regulation Summit in Washington that US regulators were working on ways to help the covered bond market’s development in the States, particularly given the way in which the failings of the originate and distribute model had exacerbated the sub-prime crisis.

Deutsche Apotheker und Ärztebank eG (apoBank), Germany’s largest primary co-operative bank, with Eu35.9bn of total assets as of 30 June 2007, plans to issue its first mortgage Pfandbrief.

Danske Bank is holding off from launching its debut euro benchmark in light of the difficult market conditions and has instead raised Eu1.1bn equivalent in the domestic Danish krone market at tighter funding levels than are available in euros.

In response to feedback from its users, The Cover today publishes for the first time a new league table, using data from Dealogic, ranking lead managers according to how many new issues they have executed, but excluding increases.

With the secondary market avoiding negative headlines for once, market participants were pleased to report stable spreads across the board. Following the first French issuance of the year last week, German bonds have become increasingly isolated, leaving traders and analysts to discuss the growing gap with France.

If recent reports are anything to go by, the Spanish banking system is on the brink of collapse. But this is far from the truth, even if cédulas issuers are adopting new strategies to cope with today’s irrational markets.

Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) has mandated ABN Amro, Caixa-Banco de Investimento, Dresdner Kleinwort and Natixis as bookrunners for a benchmark sized covered bond.