Covered Bonds

Yorkshire Building Society covered bond-holders passed a resolution to remove Standard & Poor’s from the documentation of the issuer’s covered bond programme yesterday (Tuesday).

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria yesterday (Monday) received Eu3.1bn of orders for a covered bond that was marketed at a level designed to ensure “certainty of execution”, according to bankers at the leads.

Criteria: league table includes credit for all fixed rate, public market, euro-denominated covered bonds of at least Eu500m and with at least three lead managers. *Change versus euro jumbos H1 2010 ranking.

Korea Housing Finance Corporation hopes that its covered bonds will become a conduit through which Korean commercial banks can raise funding, according to its chief financial officer, but is also backing the introduction of standards for Korea’s lenders to issue on a standalone basis.

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria this (Monday) morning launched the first sizeable new cédulas issue in three months on the back of improved market sentiment for Spanish debt.

Moody’s downgraded from A1 to A3 mortgage-backed covered bonds issued by Greece’s Marfin Egnatia Bank last Friday because of a cut in the senior unsecured rating of its parent, Cyprus’s Marfin Popular Bank.

Bank of Nova Scotia priced a $2.5bn (Eu1.96bn) three year covered bond yesterday (Thursday) that is the second largest ever dollar covered bond and the largest fixed rate single tranche dollar issue from a Canadian bank in any format, according to data from Dealogic. In euros activity has been confined to taps.

The minute the European Central Bank bought its last covered bond, Jean-Luc Covered snapped up the movie rights to The Cover’s CBPP Excel spreadsheet. Who could resist a plot with all the necessary ingredients for a summer blockbuster: a crisis of Eu60bn proportions, a glamorous yet mysterious central banker, and a dishevelled anti-hero? Today, we exclusively premiere the trailer in glorious YouTube-orama.

Fitch yesterday (Thursday) rated Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt A- on stable outlook, citing the strong integration and support it could receive from its owner Sparebanken Vest in the event of need.

The composition of the cover pool backing mortgage Pfandbriefe issued by SEB AG is set to change significantly as a result of a sale of the bank’s German retail business to Banco Santander, but the issuer is committed to defending the covered bonds’ Aa1 Moody’s rating.