Covered Bonds

Westpac's New Zealand subsidiary has appointed leads for its first euro covered bond, and the second from New Zealand, of the year. The transaction is expected to price on Tuesday.

A numerical breakdown of The Cover's 2015 awards survey by each voting group.

Several covered bond issuers need to get up to speed with their funding plans before the start of October, though investor appetite is anaemic and set to wane further. And, with the probability of a Fed’ rate hike this year being underestimated by the market, a spike in rates volatility is expected.

The European Covered Bond Council (ECBC) said on Thursday that borrowers holding the covered bond Label had agreed to report on a common basis from next year using its Harmonised Transparency Template (HTT). HTT will enable investors to compare different covered bonds on a like-for-like basis using the Covered Bond Label Platform, and comes in response to the European Commission’s Capital Markets Union initiative.

Covered bond issuers failed to take heed of poor market conditions and, just like lemmings, followed one another with poorly performing deals this week.

Kuxtabank this week issued the first Spanish covered bond backed by loans with an environmental, social and governance remit, and the first peripheral 10 year since March.

Four out of five of this week’s covered bond trades were only just subscribed and, of the 20 issued so far this month, nearly 50% of them scraped through bookbuilding. Even though conditions look increasingly unreceptive to further supply, issuers that still have funding needs would rather move sooner than later as they fear spreads and yields will go higher as a result of the recent glut of supply.

The Cover’s ninth annual awards took place this year in the magnificent settings of Casa Llotja de Mar in Barcelona on Thursday September 10. 766 market participants voted including over 350 investors with at least €400bn in covered bond assets under management. Please take a look at the pictures taken during evening.

Caja Rural de Castilla-La Mancha (CRCLM) completed a series of meetings last week and has mandated leads for its first deal, a six year that is to be launched on Tuesday.

ING in the Netherlands has won the consent of investors to amend terms of 10 covered bonds from a hard to soft bullet maturity. The result comes after a number of changes to the documentation of its larger and more established programme. The alternative €5bn soft bullet programme will only ever be used for placing bonds internally, the issuer confirmed .

The Belgian covered bond issuer has appointed lead managers for a roadshow with a view to issuing a euro benchmark, its second ever.

The Austrian covered bond issuer has completed a series of investor meetings that finished on September 18 and will launch a five year deal on Tuesday.