Covered Bonds

A clutch of issuers from outside Europe leapt into the covered bond market across a range of currencies this week in what was a spectacular display of a sector that is becoming increasingly international and important to bank funding teams around the world.

Intesa Sanpaolo reopened the Italian covered bond market last Friday, launching the first of three obbligazioni bancarie garantite (OBG) which came within six days of each other.

Books on Dutch mortgage lender Delta Lloyd’s Arena 2011-1 RMBS will close on Friday, according to syndicate bankers managing the sale. Joint leads Rabobank and Royal Bank of Scotland are still waiting for a number of accounts to come in but books are building for the publicly sold senior tranches.

Santander will bring the first UK prime RMBS deal of the year to market, through Holmes 2011-1. It has mandated BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, and Santander GBM for a roadshow to start next week.

After a slow Wednesday, the European primary market aggressively picked up pace on Thursday with a range of seven deals from six jurisdictions was announced. Many have gone live and all appear to have been readily digested –in large part reflecting the constructive underlying tone to credit markets.

Choppy market conditions limited Tuesday’s seven year covered bond for ABN Amro to the launch size of Sfr150m. This is the borrower’s second deal of the year after last week’s Sfr150m five year senior unsecured trade. Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas were the lead managers.

Guidance on Arena 2011-1, the first European RMBS of 2011, will be 105bp-110bp on the A1 notes and 145bp-150bp on the A2s, but deal progress has been slow, as harsher regulatory disclosure requirements start to bite.

Fitch yesterday (Tuesday) downgraded covered bonds issued by the National Bank of Greece to BBB+ and removed them from negative review.

The primary market for European bank issued covered bonds appears to be gently slowing with just one deal from France’s Dexia MA pricing yesterday and another from Germany’s Aareal closing books at midday. In contrast a number of transactions are in the works from Canadian and Australian banks across a range of currencies –inaugural deals from new issuers and several rumours of others.

Moody’s expects negative rating actions on covered bonds to substantially outnumber any positive actions in the year ahead, due principally to weakness in the sovereign and banking sectors.

Covered bond stalwart, Tim Skeet, has this week commenced work with fixed income brokerage, advisory and origination firm, Amias Berman & Co (ABco).