Pre-migration untagged articles

Moody’s has put on review for downgrade the triple-A ratings of WM Covered Bond Programme issues, after cutting Washington Mutual Inc from A3 to Baa2 and Washington Mutual Bank from A2 to Baa1, both with stable outlook.

Neptuno II, a Eu450m leveraged loan CLO arranged by Morgan Stanley, was priced on Tuesday.

Table two: Non-syndicated deals for less than $250m.

Table one: Non-syndicated deals for less than $250m excluding financial repackaged SPVs, self-led deals and issues with a term of less than 365 days.

Deutsche Bank’s deals settling this week — a Slovakian koruna deal for National Grid and a fixed rate step-up callable for Toyota Motor Credit Corporation — aren’t enough to keep it on top of table two this week. HSBC regains top spot, following settlement of a raft of its own-name equity-linked issues as well as recent trades for third party borrowers including Dresdner Bank in Czech korunas, ANZ Bank in Hong Kong dollars and World Bank uridashi deals in both Australian and US dollars.

It might have been a rush of enthusiasm on the part of investors looking to put cash to work before the year-end but it is likelier that a flurry of vanilla and structured private placements this week was the result of small pockets of demand finding short windows in which to execute deals.

Fixed income specialists reacted to the concerted liquidity injection by the world’s leading central banks with a range of emotions this week, ranging from mild pleasure to scorn.

Deutsche Postbank finishes the roadshow for its debut jumbo mortgage Pfandbrief today (Friday) and could be one of the first issuers into the market in 2008.

Portugal’s Banco Santander Totta has mandated Morgan Stanley to arrange its covered bond programme, and BNP Paribas, Morgan Stanley and UniCredit to lead manage its inaugural issue.

HSH Nordbank has been stressing the mobility of the collateral of ship Pfandbriefe on the roadshow for its first benchmark. Whereas housing is susceptible to the economic ebbs and flows of its location, argued the issuer, ships can go wherever favourable winds blow.

Table three: Structured, non-syndicated deals for less than $250m excluding financial repackaged SPVs, self-led deals and US GSE issuers.

Close, but no cigar! That seemed to be the verdict of the euro swaps market on the package of measures unveiled in concert by five central banks this week.