Covered Bonds

Shinsei Bank today (Tuesday) postponed what would have been Japan’s first covered bond for a second time, citing changes to its corporate calendar and internal considerations. However, a spokesperson for the bank told The Cover that it remains committed to the project.

An Australian Senate committee has recommended the Treasury examine whether to create a federal mortgage agency to buy mortgages, repackage them and sell them on with government protection.

Click here for the latest covered bond pipeline (opens pdf).

Banca Popolare di Milano (BPM) is set to wrap up its investor roadshow at the beginning of this week against a backdrop of declining bank stocks and concerns over rising inflation. One syndicate manager said that conditions may have reached the stage where the covered bond market cannot be said to be merely taking a breather, but has instead suffered a knock-out blow.

In brief: Iceland’s Kaupthing Bank kicked off its plans for quarterly covered bond issuance last week, when its offering of pass-through structured bonds was closed to domestic investors.

What a night! The Spaniards finally laid to rest any correlation between the covered bond market and football with their beautiful tiki-taka. And the Germans? Well, they were just a load of Ballacks.

The 12th Central European Covered Bond Conference took place last week, but while the event returned to Warsaw for the third time, it focused on several issues that have only recently come to the fore. The Cover discussed the highlights of the event with Otmar Stöcker, managing director of the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks, co-host of the conference with Poland’s Mortgage Credit Foundation, which initiated the conference series.

We couldn’t have scripted it better. Ever since we discovered the correlation between football and the covered bond market, a Pfandbrief versus cédulas final has had an air of inevitability about it. Will the Spanish lay to rest the ghosts of past failures? Or will the Germans bring them down to earth again? Bring on the jumbo of all finals.

In brief: Jeremy Walsh has been named as global head of covered bond syndicate at Royal Bank of Scotland.

Banca Popolare di Milano hopes to lay the foundations for regular visits to the covered bond market with the launch of the first obbligazioni bancarie garantite soon after its roadshow finishes next Monday. The Cover spoke to the issuer and its arrangers about their plans.

“What do Dexia Kommunalbank, EIB, Hypo Real Estate International, DexMA, Berlin Hyp, WL Bank and NRW.Bank all have in common?” asked Dresdner Kleinwort’s analysts in their latest Pfandbrief Weekly yesterday (Wednesday).

Critical assurances on the position of covered bonds in receivership and greater flexibility on eligibility criteria are two key demands of respondents to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s consultation on its proposed policy statement. The American Securitization Forum and Bank of America were among those getting their responses in ahead of this week’s deadline.