Denmark

Cato Baldvinsson, who has been head of group treasury at Danske Bank, will be retiring next July, and a new head has been appointed.

Denmark’s Nykredit Realkredit priced a Eu500m long three year junior covered bond on Friday and the issuer told The Cover that it was pleased with foreign investors’ response to its inaugural euro offering of what represented “senior debt with a twist”.

Supply of sizeable euro covered bonds was this week at its lowest since the benchmark market reopened at the end of August, but activity is expected to pick up again next week, with issuers also said to be preparing for issuance in dollars and niche currencies. Meanwhile, Denmark’s Nykredit Realkredit today (Friday) launched an inaugural euro junior covered bond transaction.

Standard & Poor’s, under its revised covered bond rating methodology, on Friday affirmed at AAA and removed from negative review mortgage bonds and covered bonds issued by Realkredit Danmark. Six programmes remain on review under S&P’s updated methodology.

A 10 day auction by Denmark’s Nykredit to refinance adjustable rate mortgages resulted in the sale of Dkr44.3bn (Eu5.95bn) covered bonds and historically low interest rates for retail borrowers, according to the mortgage bank.

Denmark’s Nykredit will tomorrow (Friday) begin a September round of auctions to refinance adjustable rate covered bonds maturing in October, and although volumes are higher than in previous years the supply is expected to be well absorbed.

Denmark’s adjustable rate mortgage market has won a stay of execution as a result of the Basel Committee delaying full implementation of the Net Stable Funding Ratio until 2018, and the committee’s willingness to change its position on matched funding of liabilities of less than one year.

Standard & Poor’s has affirmed at AAA mortgage-backed covered bonds issued from Danske Bank’s domestic cover pool and removed them from negative review following the application of its revised rating criteria.

Danske Bank yesterday (Wednesday) sold the first Nordic 12 year benchmark covered bond after heeding investor calls for a long maturity, a syndicate official at Danske told The Cover.

New covered bonds launched by Danske Bank, Lloyds TSB and SpareBank 1 Boligkreditt met with modest demand today (Wednesday), although syndicate bankers highlighted high quality order books and sub-Eu1bn issue sizes in longer maturities as respectable achievements.

Five new Eu500m plus covered bonds were announced in the past 24 hours after yesterday (Monday) morning’s two, despite market conditions proving worse than last week, when 12 hit the market. The deals announced today (Tuesday) are set to take euro jumbo issuance this year past Eu100bn.