Pre-migration untagged articles

Covered bonds made a comeback in the Swiss franc market this week, as investors reached for a highly rated asset class that still offers a spread above mid-swaps.

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, Santander and BNP Paribas walked away with the blue riband awards at the EuroWeek and The Cover Covered Bond Awards 2009 in Copenhagen last Thursday evening (September 17).

Adair Turner, chairman of the FSA, expanded his theory that bankers are useless this week.

Eric Kolchinsky, a former CDO analyst at Moody’s, is expected to accuse the rating agency in a congressional hearing next week of letting revenue concerns influence credit ratings and mis-rating structured debt that it knew would soon be downgraded. According to reports, he has submitted a memo to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform which accuses the agency of continuing to give tranches of CLOs investment grade ratings after deciding to update its CLO methodology late in 2008, when it knew that those ratings would be downgraded to junk after the new methodology came out.

Dealers of private EMTNs: Non-syndicated deals for less than $250m excluding financial repackaged SPVs, GSE issuers, self-led deals and issues with a term of less than 365 days.

New Zealand increased the size of its European commercial paper programme to $5bn last Friday from $1bn. The issuer is expected to be well received by investors in the ECP market.

The Republic of Portugal sold a Nkr860m 10 year fixed rate note via Barclays Capital on Thursday, its second MTN and its first in Norwegian krone. The deal, which pays a coupon of 5.03%, was seen as further evidence of investor demand for niche currencies.

E.On International Finance sold a HK$1.025bn 15 year fixed rate note via HSBC on Tuesday. The par-priced deal pays a 3.94% coupon. It is the borrower’s first Hong Kong dollar trade having sold deals in euros, sterling, Norwegian krone, Swedish krona, and yen this year.

Shell International captured the spotlight of the US corporate bond market this week with a startlingly priced $5bn issue.

Peter Graham has joined Aladdin Capital Holdings as managing director of finance. Graham, who began at the firm on Monday, joins from Clay Finley, where he had worked as chief operating officer and chief compliance officer.

ARBITRAGE conditions continued in favour of European issuers this week, fuelling issuance not only from Germany (see separate story, page 4) but also Rentenbank, Société Financement de l’Economie Française (SFEF) and the Republic of Austria, which collectively raised $12.25bn. Export Development Canada (EDC) added another $1bn of supply and in the next couple of weeks, the market is expecting the Republic of Italy, OKB or Asfinag and the International Finance Corp to make appearances.

The euro/dollar basis swap market still offers once-in-a-lifetime cost savings for European borrowers of dollars, but they had better move quickly as the window is shutting fast.