Covered Bonds

National Bank of Canada extended its euro curve by two years and priced its second euro covered bond, a €1bn seven year benchmark, on Tuesday. It looked cheap versus its previous deal, but fair value to where other Canadian transactions were trading on Tuesday.

AIB Mortgage Bank has mandated leads for a seven year covered bond to be launched on Wednesday, subject to market conditions. Meanwhile, Aktia Bank has picked leads for a covered bond roadshow starting next week.

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (Pbb) returned to the covered bond market on Tuesday to issue a €500m five year benchmark. The book attracted over €1.1bn of demand, a stronger performance than the disappointing eight year benchmark that it priced in January.

A Danish covered bond legal amendment, expected to come into force on April 1, is credit positive for Danish mortgage banks, Moody’s said on Monday.

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (Pbb) mandated Dekabank, DZ Bank, Natixis, NordLB and UniCredit on Monday to lead manage a €500m five year mortgage backed Pfandbrief.

NIBC Bank is planning to launch a second deal off its conditional pass through programme (CPTP) after mandating leads for a roadshow. The issuer’s outstanding deal has performed, but only after a fairly long period of time had elapsed, said bankers.

Despite some technical shortcomings, German Pfandbriefe comply with the transparency requirements of the Capital Requirement Regulation (CRR), according to Commerzbank research. Investors in some regimes such as the UK and the Netherlands, can now halve the capital change they apply to Pfandbriefe, it said.

Länsförsäkringar Hypotek (LF Hyp) issued Sweden’s first covered bond deal of the year on Tuesday, after Finland’s OP Mortgage Bank attracted excess demand for its deal on Monday. The Swedish bank’s euro funding was notable for being cheaper than that achievable in its home market.

The heyday of the Spanish Cédulas market may be long gone with the product presenting something of a rare commodity in the primary market these days, especially at the long end of the curve. But this week investors got their chance to buy when CaixaBank issued Spain’s second only covered bond of the year and the second only 10 year in two years, even though the issuer admitted it did not need the funding.

Westpac this week issued its first euro denominated covered bond deal of the year and the second from an Australian issuer. The deal was only modestly oversubscribed as bank treasuries weren't interested because the bond is ineligible for liquidity buffers and repo with the European Central Bank.

Bail-in rules that affect covered bonds are set to be tightened up to give investors more explicit protection in the event of a bank resolution, a banker told GlobalCapital on Thursday.

Moody’s upgrade of Irish covered bonds will expand the universe of demand. The rating action should underpin the Irish ACS market’s recent outperformance, that has been led by the Bank of Ireland’s recent five year. However, despite the real estate market stabilising, two Irish banks were downgraded due to persistent asset quality challenges.