Covered Bonds

Issuers rushed to open the euro covered bond market this week. Trades from ABN Amro, Erste Group and LBBW showed that investors are ready to put cash to work, but higher new issue premiums suggested that issuers were taking a 'conservative' approach at the beginning of the year.

Leeds Building Society opened books on Monday for its second Sonia-linked covered bond. The trade benefited from an ‘unparallelled’ level of demand, reaching almost four times its £600m size.

LBBW has picked banks to arrange the sale of a new euro covered bond as activity in the market gets off to a slower start than usual following the new year break.

Nationwide Building Society issued the first sterling covered bond of the year on Friday, without needing to pay any premium over the tight trading levels of its existing bonds.

Financial institutions could take longer than usual to return to the euro bond market at the start of 2020, with the early issuance window having been broken up by the holiday period.

The covered bond market will enter 2020 on the front foot, supported by a wave of favourable forces such as the European Central Bank’s Asset Purchase Programme and low interest rates.

Covered bonds performed well in 2019, but yields finished in negative territory and spreads ended at their tightest for the year. The implication is that, despite higher than expected ECB covered bond purchases and a renewal of its ultra-cheap TLTRO facility, investors will struggle to match 2019’s returns in 2020, writes Bill Thornhill.

Navigating the covered bond market will not be without its challenges in 2020. The Targeted Longer Term Refinancing Operation (TLTRO), European Central Bank deposit tiering and the Covered Bond Purchase Programme have collectively distorted the market, but added to this concoction is the impact of negative interest rates. Against this backdrop issuers, investors and investment bankers gathered in Munich in November to discuss the outlook for covered bonds. It is likely that new issue premiums will gradually tighten, but the path is unlikely to be smooth. January is typically the busiest month, but in 2019, issuers that funded this early paid the highest spreads. And, with the ECB expected to buy in the region of €4.5bn covered bonds a month, issuers will not feel compelled to move early. But the ECB monetary policy has unwelcome implications. Covered bonds have begun to lose value against government bonds, and this will extend if the ECB is unable to loosen restrictions on government bond purchases.

Analysts at Commerzbank have criticised Markit for excluding Deutsche Bank’s innovative conditional passthrough covered bond from the iBoxx index for covered bonds. They believe the decision is “technically difficult to justify” and could discourage other banks from embracing new formats.

GlobalCapital looks back over 2019 to assess the best euro covered bonds and banks, as rated by its Covered BondMarker. The best deals were from Lloyds, Santander and Rabobank. The best lead managers were BNP Paribas, ING and Natixis.

Compelling evidence emerged this week showing how much liquidity local investors are still looking to deploy in the Swiss franc market as the year’s end looms. On Monday, it took just 45 minutes for books to open and close on three clips of Pfandbriefbank paper.

The Association of German Pfandbrief banks (VDP) has criticised a Berlin local government decision to cap rents, which it believes will hit investor confidence and lower construction activity. Despite these concerns, the outlook for Pfandbrief supply is positive and remains underpinned by solid fundamental factors.