Covered bond issuers Bawak PSK and Helaba have mandated leads for deals that are likely to be launched on Wednesday — signalling a slackening in Tuesday’s much faster pace.

BPCE took the lion’s share demand for the six covered bonds issued on Tuesday with its stand out two-part offering that was priced flat to the curve — along with other deals from OP Mortgage Bank, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, UniCredit Bank Austria and Axa Bank Belgium, which issued its first transaction under a new and new and lower rated ownership structure.

Navigating the covered bond market will not be without its challenges in 2020. The Targeted Longer Term Refinancing Operation (TLTRO), European Central Bank deposit tiering and the Covered Bond Purchase Programme have collectively distorted the market, but added to this concoction is the impact of negative interest rates. Against this backdrop issuers, investors and investment bankers gathered in Munich in November to discuss the outlook for covered bonds. It is likely that new issue premiums will gradually tighten, but the path is unlikely to be smooth. January is typically the busiest month, but in 2019, issuers that funded this early paid the highest spreads. And, with the ECB expected to buy in the region of €4.5bn covered bonds a month, issuers will not feel compelled to move early. But the ECB monetary policy has unwelcome implications. Covered bonds have begun to lose value against government bonds, and this will extend if the ECB is unable to loosen restrictions on government bond purchases.