Finland

The Finnish government will apply the same methodology as Sweden to determine the individual fees banks will have to pay to make use of the guarantee scheme for covered bonds.

Finland will include covered bonds within its planned guarantee scheme, according to a ministry of finance official. However, the impact of the guarantees for covered bonds is likely to be limited.

The Finnish parliament is debating a government proposal for state guarantees for banks’ unsecured debt and The Cover understands that the guarantee is expected to be extended to covered bonds, as in Sweden but not most other countries.

EuroWeek, in partnership with UniCredit, recently held a Nordic roundtable where major issuers discussed their experiences during the past year and how they have coped during the crisis.

Deutsche Bank may have come first in the all benchmarks ranking for the first half of 2008, but it was by no means the strongest across all markets. Here The Cover reveals the top banks in each of the biggest sectors and examines where the leading banks’ weaknesses lie.

Aktia has successfully gained the consent of noteholders to change the provisions of its covered bonds with respect to maturity and repurchases after it was granted extra flexibility by Moody’s in the way it runs its programme.

Finland’s OP Mortgage Bank priced its new Eu1bn covered bond yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon. The issuer told The Cover it was pleased at the high level of demand for its annual euro benchmark.

Finland’s OP Mortgage Bank opened books on a new Eu1bn covered bond this (Tuesday) morning, hoping to use its shorter maturity to strike a different tenor from recent Nordic bonds that found the going tough in both the primary and secondary markets.

Finland’s OP Mortgage Bank has joined the queue of issuers planning to tap the market, but is content to wait its turn rather than push to the front. Meanwhile an issuer further down the queue has moved to the back, another has denied it was ever lining up to issue, and a third is keeping its debut to itself.

Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) priced its debut Eu2bn five year covered bond at 10bp over mid-swaps this (Tuesday) morning, at the tight end of the 11bp over mid-swaps area guidance.

In the UniCredit* Nordic covered bond roundtable participants discussed the boom in euro issuance from the region, and what differences and similarities there are between issuers and markets.