Covered Bonds

Having recently completed a series of investor meetings, and armed with an Aa1 rating from Moody's, Bluestep Bank will soon print the first Swedish covered bond secured on near-prime mortgages. The transaction emerges as aggressive quantitative easing by the Riksbank has resulted in a considerable tightening of covered bond spreads.

Santander and Deutsche Bank in Spain have structured the first Cédulas deals to be issued under the Cédulas de Internacionalización legal framework designed to finance export finance loans. The deals are likely to be retained for central bank repo purposes and emerge amid a huge expansion in retained covered bond volumes after the European Central Bank recently cut repo valuation haircuts.

Royal Bank of Canada on Wednesday became the fourth Canadian bank to issue an Australian dollar covered bond in April, pricing considerably tighter than its compatriots and in the largest size yet. The success the Canadians have enjoyed in Kangaroos is in stark contrast to a sterile sterling market.

The private placement market has provided a valuable source of funding in both covered bond and senior unsecured format, German issuers told GlobalCapital on Monday in the wake of a Moody’s report that highlighted the limited use of Pfandbrief for funding commercial lending.

Bank of Nova Scotia was set to price a €1.25bn three year covered bond tap 25bp wider than indicative secondary levels on Thursday, its third foray in euros this year and the 19th Canadian covered bond to be issued globally in 2020. The deals are in keeping with an exceptional volume of cheaply priced Canadian public ssector bond issuance and highlight a unique set of challenges for the country's borrowers, related to sinking oil prices, an inflexible central bank and the impact of Covid-19.

The majority of covered bond ratings are well protected, but even so, the outlook has clearly turned for the worse as sovereign and issuer downgrades will eventually take their toll — particularly for bonds that could cross key regulatory or investment grade thresholds.

Market participants are expecting a gigantic take-up in the next round of the European Central Bank's Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTRO III), after the central bank said that it would accept a much broader range of assets as collateral in the scheme. Smaller banks are likely to be among the biggest winners, with the new criteria helping them to look after their liquidity coverage ratios.

The European Central Bank’s clarification of how it buys covered bonds from investors changes nothing, said a leading covered bond asset manager on Wednesday. It would be more effective if the ECB were to offer, like Sweden's Riksbank, more disclosure on the bonds it was interested in buying, he said.

Bank of Montreal (BMO) on Tuesday became the third Canadian covered bond issuer to take advantage of an improvement in Aussie dollar issuance conditions following a relaxation in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s repo requirements.

Covered bond investors have begun to return, primary market spreads have tentatively started to tighten and new issue concessions are coming down — which theoretically bodes well for a broadening of supply. But bankers, battered by the stresses of the last month, remain cautious.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier (CFF) on Monday became the first covered bond issuer in April to tighten pricing from initial guidance. Other issuers will take confidence from it to consider longer dated funding, offering an alternative to European Central Bank’s repo facilities.

Toronto-Dominion Bank launched the first Australian dollar covered bond of the year on Thursday night, issuing in good size at a similar spread to where it recently issued its dollar covered bond.