Covered Bonds

Jörg Huber will shortly be changing his role at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg to head up the bank’s funding and investor relations department, and giving up his position as head of debt capital markets, The Cover understands.

Kommunalkredit Austria is in the market today (Friday) with a three year government guaranteed senior debt issue at a wider spread than was heard earlier this week, after Caixa Catalunya got its deal over the line yesterday (Thursday).

Moody’s downgraded Swedbank’s senior unsecured debt from Aa3 to A1 with a negative outlook this (Friday) morning.

Standard & Poor’s yesterday (Thursday) left the AAA rating of NIBC Bank’s covered bonds unchanged after the Dutch issuer found a counterparty to act as standby total return swap provider for its programme.

Jörg Huber will shortly be changing his job at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg to head the bank’s funding and investor relations department, and giving up his position as head of debt capital markets, EuroWeek’s sister publication, The Cover, reported on Friday.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada gave measured encouragement to proponents of a legislation framework for Canadian covered bonds at a conference in Toronto yesterday (Wednesday).

The US should look to the Danish mortgage bond system for lessons on how to operate a stable and functioning market, suggested panellists on a forum hosted by Nykredit at the Euromoney Bond Investors Congress on Tuesday.

Caixa Catalunya today (Wednesday) announced that it has mandated Caja Madrid, Commerzbank, HSBC, LBBW, Natixis and Santander as joint leads for its first government guaranteed issue.

The demise of public sector-backed Pfandbrief issuance was highlighted by the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks’ panel at the Euromoney Bond Investors Congress in London yesterday (Tuesday).

The financial crisis is likely to test whether covered bonds can maintain their record of high credit quality and ratings stability, particularly given the correlation between issuer and covered bond ratings, said Moody’s today (Wednesday) in a release accompanying the publication of its first covered bond programmes transition study.

With jumbos having difficulty gaining traction in today’s market, delegates at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg’s recent covered bond forum discussed whether smaller issue sizes could be the answer. But investors instead preferred to focus on liquidity, warning that they were no longer lonely fighters and would, if necessary, join forces to cut out covered bond traders making “risk-free” money.

Moody's yesterday (Monday) downgraded Dexia Sabadell's cédulas territoriales from Aaa to Aa1. The rating remains on review for possible downgrade, where it was placed at the beginning of October.