Covered Bonds

Canada’s Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions has removed the temporary increase of the covered bond issuance limit mirroring the Bank of Canada’s earlier decision to remove covered bonds as an eligible asset for repo funding.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier took advantage of Tuesday’s strong market conditions to issue its first covered bond of 2021, and the fifth from Groupe BPCE. The €1.5bn eight year negative yielding transaction, which was larger than expected, partially refinances a series of CFF’s redemptions coming up in the next two months.

Loans still under moratoria may be at a particularly high risk of impairment, according to fresh data from the European Banking Authority this week. The figures also revealed signs of a more general deterioration in asset quality within the EU.

A study of 657,000 UK mortgages undertaken by Nationwide Building Society over the past year suggests that the greener building a mortgage is secured on, the lower the risk of default. Moreover, this relationship is not affected by a borrower’s wealth, the location, or the type of property.

Deliveroo and its shareholders raised £1.5bn this week. The IPO was a dog, priced at the bottom of its range and falling 20% on its debut. But it’s hard to feel sympathy for the investors.

Sales of ESG-labelled debt have skyrocketed in the FIG market over the first quarter of 2021, with issuers already halfway through last year’s total volumes. Deal arrangers are confident that supply will be able to keep pace, as banks find room to expand into a burgeoning social bond market, write Tyler Davies and Bill Thornhill.

Banks that avoid holding a record of a building’s Energy Performance Certificate in some countries are more likely to meet the standard needed to meet the European Commission’s final draft Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities, delegates at the IMN’s virtual covered bond conference heard on Tuesday.

Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (CCDJ) issued a rare and well subscribed five year euro covered bond on Tuesday, which was priced inside fair value. The outcome was similar to a recent deal from National Bank of Canada, but is not expected to boost supply prospects.

HSBC UK Bank plc has set up a UK covered bond programme which, in contrast to its previous one, sits inside its ring-fenced entity and is likely to be used for distributed issuance.

The financial markets’ stance on climate change has taken a stride forward as 43 asset managers with $23tr of assets including some of the biggest such as BlackRock and Vanguard have joined the Net Zero Asset Managers’ Initiative. A critical mass of investors is now committed to reducing carbon emissions in their portfolios to zero, meaning that companies can be in no doubt which way they have to go if they want to maximise their potential investor base.

The polite world of sustainable finance has collided with the ugly reality of politics in the past week, as open strife has broken out over the European Union’s sustainable finance legislation, especially the Taxonomy. Conservative and progressive elements are battling over a host of issues, above all whether gas power should ever be classed as sustainable, and the validity and even legality of the Taxonomy is being called into question.

Financial institutions bond bankers are hoping to build back better in April after coping with a tumultuous end to the first quarter. They say the holiday season and a recent back-up in yields will combine to create the perfect conditions for a long-awaited credit rally.