Europe

Lloyds Bank’s €1.5bn five year has achieved the highest score of any covered bond issued this year in BondMarker and UBS has, on average, worked on the highest quality deals this year.

Yorkshire Building Society has mandated for a five year euro covered bond that will be the second euro benchmark covered bond from a UK bank this year. The deal emerges as investors chasing yield flatten the covered bond curve.

FMS Wertmanagement has made an internal appointment to its capital markets team to look after its funding in dollars and sterling.

Rabobank sold a 12 year non-preferred senior bond in euros on Monday, the longest dated offering that any bank has tried in a senior format so far this year.

Boutique investment bank Alantra has made new hires across its offices in Europe, Asia and the US.

LBBW did not have to pay a premium to launch a tier two in 10 year bullet format on Monday. A banker on the deal said that other issuers could follow suit, eschewing call options to take advantage of a renewed thirst for duration among investors.

In this round up, the Belt and Road Summit 2019 wrapped up on Saturday with numerous deals, monthly industrial profit increased sharply in March and China reported a small capital outflow.

Société Générale may have provided market participants with a glimpse into the future after becoming the first bank to issue a covered bond as a security token on a public blockchain. Development of this technology is still at an early stage and is not without its risks, but proponents believe blockchain could revolutionise the covered bond market, reducing settlement times to just a few seconds.

A substantial and growing proportion of asset managers are asking big oil companies to realign their businesses with the Paris Agreement by moving away from fossil fuels, a survey released on Monday has found. But only a few have set deadlines or thought about what to do if the oil companies fail to comply.

Swedish krona levels look attractive compared to euros, say bankers, leading to a raft of large deals being printed at the short end. Swedbank and Deutsche Pfandbriefbank both benefited from these levels when they printed covered bonds this week.

NatWest Markets made a loss in the first quarter, Royal Bank of Scotland said on Friday when presenting its results, partly thanks to it being made to account for the cost of old RBS plc debt. The group will also now stop including NatWest Markets when reporting its net interest margin, and one analyst said this could raise questions about commitment to the investment bank.

This week's funding scorecard looks at the progress of Europe's supranationals and agencies at the end of April.