Europe

Germany’s Federal Financing Supervisory Authority (BaFin) banned uncovered short-selling of euro-zone government bonds and their CDS by German banks as of midnight last night, raising fears that liquidity in covered bonds would be hit and a reopening of the benchmark market delayed.

Barclays Bank plans to issue registered covered bonds off its Eu35bn global covered bond programme, the UK bank announced today (Tuesday).

Deutsche Hypothekenbank yesterday (Monday) achieved its goal of reopening the covered bond market and, according to its leads, did so without having to pay for the privilege.

Deutsche Hypothekenbank this (Monday) morning reopened the covered bond market after more than three weeks without any sizeable issues. Market participants welcomed the deal, but suggested that it was not representative of the wider situation in the market.

The Asian Development Bank has been accused of being “absolutely deaf” to concerns raised by human rights campaigners, who were barred by Uzbek authorities from attending the multilateral bank’s forum in Tashkent earlier this month

Hopes that benchmark covered bond issuance could restart next week have been reined in after reports that French president Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to pull out of the euro-zone contributed to renewed volatility today (Friday).

The Association of Danish Mortgage Banks is exploring the possibility of specialist mortgage banks being allowed to meet the Capital Requirements Directive’s requirement for continuous loan-to-value (LTV) compliance by providing guarantees for the portions of loans that exceed relevant LTV limits, a measure that is currently only available to the country’s universal banks.

France’s Crédit Mutuel Arkéa yesterday (Monday) started a two week roadshow for a Eu10bn covered bond programme. Meanwhile, a European Central Bank governing council member said that there have been “no changes” to the covered bond purchase programme.

The Norwegian Covered Bond Council, which was established in January, aims to enhance Norwegian covered bonds and promote them to domestic and foreign investors, according to Norwegian market participants.

Standard & Poor’s yesterday (Monday) upgraded WestLB Covered Bond Bank (CBB) from BBB+ to AA- and lifted its outlook from negative to stable, and changed the CreditWatch on the issuer’s covered bonds from negative to developing.

Fitch downgraded three Greek mortgage covered bond programmes yesterday (Thursday), and left them on rating watch negative, due to severely impaired market funding sources for Greek assets.

Standard & Poor’s has affirmed at AAA the ratings of mortgage covered bonds issued by Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank under its new rating criteria.