Covered Bonds

DBS Bank is touted to bring Singapore’s first covered bond, possibly in the first quarter, bankers told The Cover on Wednesday, with Barclays and Deutsche Bank rumoured to be the lead managers. The Monetary Authority of Singapore cleared the way for banks to structure covered bond deals, when it updated its issuance rules on December 31.

Kookmin, Woori and Shinhan have large mortgage market shares according to Moody’s which gave a positive assessment of the country's new covered bond regulation. The rating agency also said Singaporean regulation was a positive despite shortfalls.

Aareal Bank and UniCredit Bank Austria priced successful euro deals in five and 10 year maturities on Monday, while Abbey issued a three year in sterling. All three priced at the tighter end of initial thoughts. However, prospective core borrowers with larger funding needs may need to offer more tempting spreads as the market softened on Monday.

Nine euro issuers took advantage of strong market conditions to raise €8bn in covered bond funding during the first week of the year. The issuers collectively attracted €17bn of demand spread over more than 900 orders, but the pick of the bunch were two borrowers from Spain and Portugal who attracted by far the highest levels of over-subscription over the broadest range of investors.

The public sector-owned French covered bond issuers, Caffil and La Banque Postale, returned to the covered bond market to issue two of the three 10 year deals seen this week. The deals were comfortably oversubscribed and provided exceptionally cheap funding for both issuers.

Lloyds Bank issued the first sterling covered deal from a UK issuer in the home currency since May 2012 on Tuesday. Despite pricing at a fraction of the 170bp spread that Clydesdale Bank paid for the last UK sterling floating rate deal, Lloyds managed to achieve the highest level of demand for this format in local currency.

Nordea Finland and Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt achieved the best results among the slate of deals that were issued by core covered bond issuers this week. Both transactions attracted among the highest level of over subscription, despite pricing at the tightest spreads.

Aareal Bank has mandated joint leads for a benchmark covered bond likely to be launched early next week. A number of other mainly core issuers are also eyeing next week’s market. But, with senior spreads still trading tight, most borrowers will probably defer covered bond deals until later in the year, said bankers.

Initial price thoughts are a useful price discovery tool in illiquid markets. But in core markets where liquidity is high, they can obfuscate how successful a deal has been. It is time to consider doing away with them where possible.

Compagnie de Financement Foncier no longer holds securitisations on its balance sheet, freeing it to issue benchmark deals that comply with the Capital Requirements Directive and will be repo eligible.

Nine euro issuers took advantage of strong market conditions to raise €8bn in covered bond funding during the first week of the year. The issuers collectively attracted €17bn of demand spread over more than 900 orders, but the pick of the bunch were two borrowers from Spain and Portugal who attracted by far the highest levels of over-subscription over the broadest range of investors.

Nordea Finland and Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt achieved the best results among the slate of deals that were issued by core covered bond issuers this week. Both transactions attracted among the highest level of over subscription, despite pricing at the tightest spreads.