Covered Bonds

Caffil, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, Danish Ship Finance, Deutsche Bank, DZ Hyp, mBank, and NordLB are lining up a plethora of unusual and inaugural issuance, as they look to benefit from the European Central Bank’s decision to resume net purchases at higher-than-expected volumes.

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) overarching presence in the covered bond market was conspicuous this week but, with relative value waning and yields likely to fall, it may not prevent spread widening early next year. There was evidence of its hand too in the corporate bond market. Bill Thornhill, Burhan Khadbai and Mike Turner report.

Deutsche Bank will meet investors next week to market a structured covered bond, people familiar with the deal told GlobalCapital on Thursday. The bank will enjoy a material reduction in the cost of funding compared with senior preferred debt and will still be able to offer investors a big pick-up to Pfandbriefe, meaning the innovative deal has already sparked widespread interest from rival issuers and investors alike. Bill Thornhill reports.

Poland's mBank Hipoteczny has mandated leads for a roadshow ahead of a planned sub-benchmark sized deal. It could surface in a busier than expected market in November now that some issuers will be reconsidering their funding strategies after the European Central Bank bought more than anticipated in the primary market this week.

Demand for covered bonds issued on Wednesday by Deutsche Kreditbank (DKB) and BPCE exploded towards the final hour of book building, as the European Central Bank placed crushingly large orders for the deals. Even though the granularity of the order books was good on this occasion, the central bank’s larger than expected presence was expected to displace real investors.

Deutsche Bank plans to sell a structured conditional pass-through (CPT) covered bond that is packed with commercial mortgages and has a double-A rating. The collateral-efficient funding makes perfect sense for the issuer and, in a negative yield environment, it could also potentially be interesting for certain investors.

Sparebank 1 Boligkreditt (Spabol) took advantage of positive swap yields to issue a well-subscribed €1bn 10 year this week. Danmarks Skibskredit and mBank are likely to follow soon, having each mandated lead managers for covered bond roadshows.

Leads on Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation’s two part dollar and euro covered bond were criticised for not being transparent with the order book update, which was expressed without giving the currency of the demand, but in the final analysis, the sale of the high yielding euro portion went better than expected.

Luminor Bank is likely to issue the debut Estonian covered bond in the first quarter of 2020 according to the bank’s head of treasury, Max Ehrengren. Although the programme will have capacity to issue deals secured on Lithuanian and Latvian assets, the inaugural transaction will be exclusively secured on Estonian assets.

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) is expected to open order books on Tuesday for a dollar and euro covered bond. Deutsche Kreditbank will follow with its social Pfandbrief on Wednesday. Credit Mutuel Arkea will see investors with plans to issue its first public sector covered bond.

The covered bond market is likely to get its first glimpse of renewed European Central Bank participation in the primary market next Wednesday, which could help crystalise opinions on the spread outlook for the product.

Negative rates are expected to persist in covered bonds, forcing investors to widen their search for value. And with spreads likely to tighten as the European Central Bank ramps up buying from November, some are looking to local currency Nordic markets.