Europe

Northern Rock Asset Management (NRAM) made a tender offer for its €2bn 3.875% November 2020 on Monday and will pay a 2% premium. The bank has also proposed an extraordinary resolution to redeem all notes other than those tendered, for which it will not pay a premium.

Covered bonds and RMBS share important similarities which both the European Central Bank and Bank of England acknowledged last year in a discussion paper. As the two asset classes evolve, their vastly different regulatory treatment should become more difficult to justify. A comparison of Rabobank’s Storm 2015-1 RMBS, originated by its Obvion subsidiary, to a forthcoming conditional pass through covered bond to be issued by Van Lanschot Bankiers shows that regulation remains a more important determinant of price than fundamental credit risk.

Lloyds Bank plc returned to the sterling covered bond market for the second time this year to issue the first fixed rate deal in the UK currency since 2012 on Friday. Following the long run of three year floaters the issuer priced a seven year, which benefitted from new ICMA guidelines, applied for the first time to sterling covered bonds.

China Construction Bank (CCB) and Commerzbank have launched the first Ucits-compliant ETF fund under China’s RQFII scheme. The fund, which was announced on March 25, will invest in China’s money market.

Deutsche Bank was awarded the biggest ever single quota for the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (RQFII) scheme on March 26, its Rmb6bn ($966m) taking the total allocated size of the programme to Rmb330bn at 111 firms.

The Netherlands has become the first country to comply with best practice guidelines proposed by the European Banking Authority last year, and on Thursday the Dutch Finance Ministry had the opportunity to showcase its covered bond regime at the European Covered Bond Council’s (ECBC) plenary meeting in Amsterdam. The ministry took the opportunity to stress the importance of maintaining diversified sources of funding and the need for consistent regulatory treatment between the covered bond and securitization markets.

WL Bank can usually be counted on to succeed where others are less fortunate but on Wednesday the German issuer tempted fate with its decision to price a 12 year benchmark. With this deal seven of the last 10 covered bonds have had maturities of 10 years or longer, where demand is more limited and more sensitive to price.

Swedbank became the seventh issuer to price a sterling three year covered bond FRN this year, launching a £500m deal on Wednesday. This is the third transaction from an overseas covered bond issuer in sterling and shows the attractiveness of the basis swap, particularly after the surprise reate cut in Sweden.

Aktia Bank Finland priced its Aaa-rated €500m no-grow deal on Tuesday, in what can only be described as a straightforward well prepared transparent process. In contrast, Banco Popular Espanol came to market with a less prepared €1bn, Baa1-rated offering in an over supplied part of the curve, just as peripheral sovereign volatility spiked higher. Nevertheless, with an attractive concession, the Spanish issuer got a fair result.

Clearstream, the international central securities depository of Deutsche Börse Group, is making further progress in its Asia strategy by opening offshore renminbi cash correspondent bank (CCB) accounts with Chinese banks based in Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Singapore.

The euro/dollar exchange rate’s correction following last week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting provided an ideal opportunity for LBBW to tap its March 2018, Reg S dollar benchmark on Monday. In the meantime, Aktia Bank announced plans to open books on Tuesday for a €500m seven year, which is expected to benefit from Moody’s recent change in its rating methodology.

Aktia Bank has a strong liquidity position, good asset quality and solid capital ratios, but as one of Finland’s smaller banks it has a low market share and as such, faces a fiercely competitive environment, said analysts at LBBW research on Friday.