Finland

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.

While Nordic issuers have not been able to completely avoid the recent turmoil in the covered bond market, their credit quality and relative scarcity have served them well, and investors’ enthusiasm for their paper has enabled them to achieve funding levels as good as, if not better than, expected.

With the key Norwegian piece slotting into place next to Sweden and Finland, all that is needed is Denmark to complete the Nordic covered bond jigsaw. Bankers say that the region may also emerge as a test-bed for the next generation of products in terms of geographical diversification, such as multi-jurisdictional deals with mortgages in the cover pool drawn from a number of countries. Philip Moore reports.