Euro

Standard & Poor’s and Fitch have both assigned top ratings to NIBC’s conditional pass-through covered bond. The issuer has privately placed a small amount of bonds and is expect to publicly distribute them, according to S&P.

Sparebanken Vest Boligkreditt (SVB) returned to the covered bond market on Wednesday, after more than 18 months away, issuing a no grow €500m five year that was priced flat to its outstanding curve.

Bank Austria has tapped an outstanding five year by less than the maxmum it had targeted. But leads did not think any conclusion could be drawn from this.

Credit Mutuel CIC and AIB Mortgage Bank both launched covered bonds on Tuesday. The French transaction offered a larger new issue premium and attracted greater demand, but this came from a much narrower range of investors than the Irish deal, which larger investors spurned due to country limits.

Banco Popular Español returned to the covered bond market for the second time this year and reduced its reliance on retained issuance to bring a four year Cédulas, that was increased from €500m to €750m. Despite being barely oversubscribed and overly reliant on the domestic bid, the book was granular.

ABN Amro returned to the covered bond market on Thursday with its first deal of 2013, a €1.5bn 10 year. After being out of the market for just over a year, the borrower attracted a comfortably oversubscribed order book in a very short time span, underscoring a much greater depth to the market than ANZ’s recent funding appeared to suggest.

Bankers have played down fresh reports of Dutch government plans to set up a mortgage financing agency to fund low risk mortgages. The topic has been under discussion for some time and the final outcome remains uncertain, bankers told The Cover on Thursday.

Austria’s Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederoesterreich-Wien (RLB NW) is set to price its first deal of the year late in September and mandated leads on Thursday for a benchmark euro deal that will follow a three day roadshow.

Bankers reported on Thursday that there has been barely any movement in Hypo Real Estate Holding bonds since it announced on Monday that it would start looking for a buyer for its Depfa Bank plc subsidiary, thereby fulfilling the European Commission’s conditions for its earlier bail-out.

ANZ Bank’s €1bn five year, priced on Tuesday at 17bp over mid-swaps, was placed with around 50 accounts after leads built a €1.15bn book.

Buying interest for core paper in the secondary market remains buoyant, despite volatility in other corners of the credit markets, and bankers reckon a deal from a strong name would still work. Issuers decided to hold off on Wednesday, however, as Kommunalkredit Austria joined the pipeline.

ANZ Bank launched a five year euro benchmark on Tuesday, despite a weak market backdrop, only a few weeks after it tapped the Aussie dollar market with a 10 year covered bond.