Euro

Caja Rural de Navarra issued a €500m seven year mortgage backed Cédulas on Tuesday at almost half the spread level achieved by Intesa San Paolo in January. The strong outcome underscored the impression that spread tightening momentum for smaller peripheral covered bond issuers has continued undiminished.

Swedbank is expected to open books for a benchmark seven year covered bond on Wednesday having mandated joint leads BNP Paribas, Danske Bank, LBBW, Swedbank and UBS on Tuesday.

The Austrian Financial Markets Authority (FMA) said on Sunday that it will proceed with a resolution of Heta Asset Resolution AG (HAR), the state-owned wind down company responsible for disposing of the non-performing assets of Hypo Alpe Adria (HAA). The process is expected to provide the first practical test of the covered bond market’s exemption from bail in said analysts at Deutsche Bank.

The Spanish issuer has mandated Banco Cooperativo Español (no-books), BBVA, Crédit Agricole CIB, DZ Bank and HSBC as joint-lead managers for a euro-denominated mortgage-backed Cédulas. The seven year deal is expected to launched on Tuesday and will be rated A1 by Moody's.

While there is no immediate impact on Aareal Bank's Pfandbrief ratings following its planned acquisition of Westdeutsche Immobilienbank (WestImmo), the rating could change if the pools were merged, said Fitch on Thursday. However, analysts say a merged pool could be better quality and note that the covered bond ratings are well protected.

NORD/LB Covered Finance Bank is expected to open books for its inaugural five year €500m Lettres de Gage Publiques on Monday after mandating leads on Friday. Bankers expect a less busy week ahead, but believe there is scope for one or two other deals to be announced at short notice. Market conditions remain strong and recent issuance, such as UniCredit’s conditional pass through, have all performed.

Six European covered bond borrowers launched deals worth a total €5bn this week and, despite setting new spread records, all were easily digested and performed well. Cumulative demand stood at nearly €10bn spread across 500 investor orders. But those deals that offered the most attractive spread attracted the most granular books.

UniCredit issued its inaugural conditional pass through covered bond on Thursday and despite the new structure, the final spread was flat to where it would have priced a deal from its soft bullet programme. The head of group strategic funding emphasised the deal’s rating stability as the key attribute and not its collateral efficiency.

European authorities want banks to provide credit to small and medium sized enterprises through SME backed covered bonds. But they don’t need the funding; they need capital. They need securitization.

ABN has followed Credit Suisse by issuing a consent solicitation in which it proposes to change 10 outstanding hard bullet covered bonds to soft bullet maturities.

UniCredit has mandated leads for the first deal to be issued off its newly restructured conditional pass through (CPT) covered bond programme, and is expected to launch the deal on Thursday.

Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen Girozentrale (Helaba) issued a €1bn Pfandbrief on Wednesday at a final spread that was deeply through mid-swaps but got a strong response as it was able to offer a positive spread to Germany, where yields are negative. At the same time, Danske Bank issued this week’s only euro benchmark. As it was not eligible for the covered bond purchase programme it offered a quite attractive spread.