Pre-migration untagged articles

Interest in the Indonesian rupiah from an Asian account led to a series of trades for Kommunalbanken and KfW this week. The deals were the biggest completed in the currency so far this year.

Banques Populaires priced a Eu1bn five year mortgage backed benchmark a day ahead of schedule on Tuesday, despite coming last in the wave of supply that has followed the ECB’s announcement.

Canada Housing Trust sold C$5.6bn of Canada Mortgage Bonds in two tranches on Wednesday. Leads Merrill Lynch Canada, BMO Capital Markets, CIBC World Markets and TD Securities tapped a 10 year CMB and priced a new five year FRN.

The collapse of trading volumes and the new issue markets on the London Stock Exchange as well as a write off of its investment in Borsa Italiana proved to be major factors in accounting for its £251m pre-tax loss last year. It had earned £173m the previous year.

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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.

The number of companies active in the European commercial paper market grew this week, but more are needed, say bankers. Strong investor demand for commercial paper from solid well-run companies, which is in short supply, means that strong companies are able to issue at very low levels.

Moody’s has put Assured Guaranty’s Aa2 rating and Financial Security Assurance’s Aa3 rating on review for possible downgrade mainly because of its concerns over the insurers’ exposure to mortgage risk. Assured is rated AA- by Standard & Poor’s and AA by Fitch. FSA is rated AAA/AA+.

Financial institutions this week supported the case for covered bonds to play a leading role in the banking industry’s exit strategy from government guaranteed issuance by issuing four jumbos totalling Eu5.5bn versus zero state-backed supply in euros.

Having made a storming recovery in the public markets, enquiry, and now trades, for bank paper without a government guarantee has returned to the private placement market, in part because of an overspill of demand from benchmark deals.

A victory of sorts is being enjoyed by Merrill Lynch’s European investment banking division. After a deluge of senior departures, Bank of America has agreed to pay retention packages to prevent a further erosion of the business.

Structured note enquiry is considerably lower than a few weeks ago but pockets of persistent but limited demand are still leading to sporadic trades.