Fitch Ratings has established a dedicated European covered bond team in London and plans to hire two professionals to join Hélène Heberlein, Raimon Royo and João Marques. The aim of the group is to create a unified view of covered bonds in Europe within Fitch. The team will initially focus on clarifying and comparing covered bond structures in different European jurisdictions and expects to publish its findings in the coming months, according to Heberlein. Fitch's banking and securitization analysts will continue to rate individual deals.
"The team is a joint venture between the structured finance and financial institutions teams within Fitch, and will be drawing on the expertise of the international public finance team as well," said Heberlein, who heads the group and was previously head of the firm's structured finance team in Paris. "It is an improvement on the informal coordination we've had in place, rather than a radical change," she added.
The need for coordination has increased over the last year as covered bonds have been issued in more European jurisdictions, Heberlein noted. "More and more investors are coming to us asking for comparisons between, say, the German Pfandbrief and the French obligation foncière," she said.
Neither Moody's Investors Service nor Standard & Poor's have a similar group of professionals dedicated solely to covered bonds.
