Currencies

UniCredit’s German subsidiary HypoVereinsbank (HVB) priced a well oversubscribed four year Hypothekenpfandbrief on Tuesday. Following a strong reception for CIBC’s three year on Monday, it’s likely other issuers will be looking to take advantage of the surprisingly strong funding window that has followed last week’s European Central Bank meeting.

IMF staff have issued a detailed report containing the analysis and recommendations made to the Fund's executive board ahead of its SDR decision. The report offers a useful analysis into the RMB's standing globally, including its importance as a reserve currency and the level of trading it commands in global foreign exchange markets.

UBS has announced a tender offer for a number of deals including one dollar denominated covered bond. The announcement comes in response to an earlier pledge to build up its Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC), which should be credit positive for its covered bonds, even though the programme is being wound down.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce took advantage of the back-up in three year euro swap yields following the European Central Bank meeting last week to issue a covered bond on Monday. The issuer paid a relatively small concession, funded 10bp more cheaply than it could have done in the dollar market and placed nearly a third with central banks.

The European Central Bank failed to meet the scale of quantitative easing the market expected, though to the extent it can buy a wider range of assets, this could allow it to scale back covered bond purchases, bankers told The Cover.

The IMF has approved the renminbi as the fifth currency in its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket of currencies with a weighting of 10.92%. The new SDR will come into effect on October 1, 2016.

A symbolic rather than market changing move is the general view of the renminbi’s inclusion into IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket. However, many analysts believe impact could be profound if China is willing to take the real test reforming its domestic financial markets.

GlobalCapital and The Cover held a roundtable in November involving new issuers, well recognised names, a leading covered bond investor, and a Commerzbank debt capital markets executive to discuss some of the most pertinent factors affecting the covered bond market today, including relative value, the impact of the ECB’s purchase programme, issuers’ euro funding needs and their strategic marketing approaches.

Australian covered bonds, which offer among the widest spreads for the high credit quality, have been better bid in the secondary market over the past two weeks, but on Wednesday buying interest was reported further out along the curve. The news comes after Fitch and Moody’s published relatively upbeat assessments of the Australian and New Zealand covered bond markets.

The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) is set to launch trading of offshore RMB (CNH) futures contracts on December 18. The exchange is looking to leverage the RMB’s new-found status as an SDR currency, it told GlobalRMB.

Asset manager AllianceBernstein is offering a drastically different view on the knock on effects from the renminbi’s inclusion in the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket. While the consensus is that it will have little impact on the desirability of RMB assets, the manager is forecasting a huge spike in demand.

A year after the European Central Bank started buying covered bonds for its third purchase programme (CBPP3), the pool of investors that buy eurozone covered bonds has dwindled. But this provides a unique opportunity for issuers ineligible for CBPP3. Canadian banks have brought a welcome injection of attractively priced paper that has engaged a broad audience. And with CBPP3 set to continue for at least another year, the outlook for inaugural deals from new countries is promising. Euro issuance from Singapore, Poland and Turkey should soon be offering investors a broad menu of credits, at potentially interesting spread levels.