Currencies

Moody’s published its new covered bond rating methodology on Monday. The rating agency will use a bank’s counterparty risk rating as starting point rather than its senior unsecured rating. As counterparty rating will be the same or higher than the senior rating, the overall impact should be positive.

A partial sale of Kommunalkredit to a new company, KA New, is likely to lead to lower credit ratings for the bank’s Swiss franc-denominated covered bonds. However its euro-denominated covered bonds will remain in the wind down entity, KA Finanz, and should be better protected, said Commerzbank research on Monday.

A partial sale of Kommunalkredit to a new company, KA New, is likely to lead to lower credit ratings for the bank’s Swiss franc-denominated covered bonds. However its euro-denominated covered bonds will remain in the wind down entity, KA Finanz, and should be better protected, said Commerzbank research on Monday.

Rabobank’s Obvion subsidiary sold nearly €2bn of five year RMBS last Thursday, at a considerable spread pick up to where Dutch pass-through covered bonds from entities with much weaker ratings would be expected to price. The deal, originated by one of the best rated banks in the world and backed by very high quality collateral, suggested that covered bond investors could be missing out by not looking at the RMBS market.

Germany’s Deposit Protection Fund (DPF) will provide a guarantee on the exposure that Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank (DuessHyp) has to Austria’s Heta Asset Resolution, according to a statement published by the German Association of Banks (Bundesverband deutscher Banken) on Sunday.

DBS is on course to become the first covered bond issuer from Singapore, having proposed a unique structure that will overcome the sticky issue of who has first claim on the asset pool. An agreement is close to being struck and the Singaporean lender is looking then to issue a benchmark size offering in either dollars or euros.

The Swedish FSA’s proposals, requiring borrowers to pay down their mortgages to a loan to value of 50%, is credit positive for covered bonds, said analysts at Danske Bank research on Friday. The proposals, which were published on Wednesday, should lead to a decline in household indebtedness and should dampen house prices.

The European Central Bank owns 15% of eligible benchmark covered bonds since its third purchase programme (CBPP3) began. It could end up owning 40%, which could permanently disrupt the market.

Euro covered bond issuance could be poised to moderate next week, though it is still likely that one or two deals could emerge at short notice. Issuers outside Europe are less inclined to bring euro benchmarks as a change in the basis swap with dollars has reduced the difference in the cost of funding.

German banks have a larger exposure to Heta Asset Resolution — the bad bank of Hypo Alpe Adria — than Austrian banks, said Fitch on Thursday. Despite this, Fitch thinks losses should be manageable. Research from NordLB, also released on Thursday, shows the distribution of this risk across German Pfandbriefe cover pools.

Deutsche Kreditbank closed the spread gap to its higher rated peer, Muenchener Hypothekenbank (Muhyp) on Thursday when it priced a 12 year mortgage Pfandbrief. The ambitious price was justified by the high quality book and comfortable level of oversubscription. Meanwhile Aareal Bank is out with guidance on its first RegS dollar benchmark, which will be priced later today.

Fitch put Duesseldorfer Hypothekenbank’s (DuessHyp) BBB- rating on Watch Negative and downgraded its Viability Rating (VR). The bank urgently needs capital, which should ultimately be available from the German government, said the ratings agency. It may be the latest example of the fallout from the Austrian state of Carinthia’s decision not to honour the guarantee of Heta Asset Resolution's unsecured bonds.