Covered Bonds

Standard & Poor’s yesterday (Monday) affirmed a further five covered programmes at AAA under its new covered bond rating methodology, taking the number of programmes that have kept their top rating to 11.

These charts and tables provide an overview of benchmark covered bond issuance in 2009, breaking down total supply by country, maturity, and month, and also compare 2009 issuance volumes with supply in previous years.

These charts and tables provide an overview of covered bond issuance in 2009, breaking down total supply by country, currency, maturity, and month, and also compare 2009 issuance volumes with supply in previous years.

The first new mandate of the week is expected to be announced soon and its reception could give an indication as to whether or not the record pace of the past fortnight can be sustained, or whether the difficulties faced by some issuers last week will resurface.

Caixa Geral de Depósitos shrugged off Abbey’s retreat from issuance plans and weaker sentiment towards peripheral sovereigns to price a 10 year issue yesterday (Thursday) afternoon, with the order books built as Portuguese sovereign spreads gapped out. And more issuers are said to be considering coming to market next week.

Buying under the European Central Bank’s Eu60bn purchase programme has picked up after a lull over the winter holidays, with this week’s reporting capturing any purchases of the first of last week’s flurry of deals.

Liz Padova Hanson, who was previously head of US covered bond structuring at RBS/ABN Amro, has joined Barclays Capital as a managing director in the bank’s asset securitisation origination business in the Americas.

Caixa Geral de Depósitos is set to take Abbey’s place as the record ninth benchmark covered bond issuer this week, after the Portuguese but not the UK bank decided to brave the week’s widening market.

In contrast to most of this week’s supply, the inaugural HSBC Covered Bonds (France) transaction was yesterday (Wednesday) priced at the tight end of where it had been whispered, despite being the seventh seven year of 2010 and being launched into a weak market.

Swedbank Mortgage this week became the first issuer to price a three year benchmark covered bond this year, before two other deals followed quickly in the same maturity. The issuer told The Cover that it wanted to distinguish itself from the longer dated issuance that had dominated supply so far.

UBS yesterday (Wednesday) launched the week’s third three year in quick succession but there was still enough demand for the leads to size a Eu1.5bn deal on the back of a Eu2bn order book.