Covered Bonds

Slovakia's Vseobecna uverova banka (VUB) will offer covered bond investors a rare chance to buy bonds with a considerable pick-up to core European deals, having mandated leads for a €500m five year deal rated Aa2 that is expected to be launched on Tuesday, subject to market conditions which have recently deteriorated.

Covered bond spreads in euros have already recovered more than half of the widening that they suffered through March and April due to the coronavirus pandemic. Market participants are now scrambling to find the bargains as returns vanish once again.

A wide gamut of deals across asset classes filtered through the Swiss franc market this week. Gyrations in swaps allowed Crédit Agricole to come flat on euros on Thursday, while also giving investors a great deal on a long end Lausanne trade.

Market participants re-examined the prospects for covered bond supply in sterling this week in the wake of two deals from SSA borrowers in the currency. Spreads have tightened and issuance conditions have improved but that will have to be balanced against bargain basement priced funding available from central banks, bankers said on Thursday.

Market participants expect European banks to take a large chunk of funding through the European Central Bank’s Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO III) programme, hitting covered bond supply levels. But issuance in other asset classes should remain unaffected as banks follow through with their funding plans.

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (PBB) has announced a tender offer for up to €250m covered bonds. Like Berlin Hyp, it has ensured that the affected deal will remain at benchmark size, but, in contrast to its peer, it is not planning a replacement issue.

The European Covered Bond Council has updated its harmonised transparency template to include a new tab that tracks mortgage loans that have been granted a payment holiday due to the impact of Covid-19. Credit rating agency analysts welcomed the move, but said there is still a question over how loans will perform after payment holidays end.

Achmea Bank issued the first conditional pass-through (CPT) covered bond since October 2019 on Tuesday with the juicy spread ensuring the most oversubscribed order book ever for this structure, enabling the deal to be priced flat to fair value.

The coronavirus crisis may have hit overall covered bond supply prospects, but it has provided a silver lining for some banks — such as Credit Suisse, ING and Commerzbank which have all fared well in the covered bond league tables this year.

LBBW printed the first Pfandbrief since the onset of the coronavirus crisis with a deal that was priced flat to fair value. The high level of demand suggested good scope for the bond to perform and showed that investors are ready to buy, even though the deal was priced tighter than German Laender bonds — which is very unusual.

Berlin Hyp has launched tender offers on four of its euro covered bonds in an effort to optimise its funding costs and provide liquidity to investors. The issuer also plans a new long dated covered bond.

Rating agency Scope beat many European agencies to the punch in adopting new covered bond rating methodology in 2015, which is today considered a standard approach. But the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) is fining the agency on the grounds that it failed to apply it consistently and with the regulator’s permission.