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The $32bn green bond market grows ever stronger, as NRW.Bank pricing last week’s deal through its curve proves. But the real innovations in green finance are much further from the mainstream – like Hawaii’s solar panel ABS and Electricité de France’s plans for a green private equity fund.
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The European Central Bank put a lot of effort into telling everyone securitization’s direct link to the real economy was the reason it deserved to be the principal target of asset purchases. Now that illusion has been shattered by reports it is considering corporate bond purchases, the ECB should just get on with the broad-based cash injection it clearly intends.
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The eternal tussle between equity and triple-A investors in collateralised loan obligations intensified this week, as a widening in triple-A CLO spreads drove down equity returns even further and forced some arrangers and managers to make concessions in order to lock senior debt investors into their deals. -
The longer the European Central Bank waits to talk about sovereign quantitative easing, the closer sovereign QE seems to become.
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to make written complaints public on its online consumer complaints database. Unsurprisingly, the Mortgage Bankers Association objects. But when online customer reviews have empowered consumers in other sectors, why should the banking industry get special treatment?
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Münchener Hypothekenbank’s €300m ESG Pfandbrief will be remembered as one of the most important milestones in the development of the socially responsible investment (SRI) bond market.
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The European Central Bank has finally put its money where its mouth has been for some time on reviving European securitization. But if it doesn’t help banks shift the riskiest tranches off their books, it will have changed absolutely nothing.
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Some market commentators seem to think the European Central Bank's ABS purchase programme is not the real deal, because it will be limited in size by the low volume of placed securitizations and the difficulty of pricing off-market deals. One research team estimates the ECB might buy €40bn over three years. But this seriously underestimates the potency of the ECB’s move.
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Boris Johnson’s plan for a new island airport east of London is a vainglorious waste of money. The UK’s decision to build new runway capacity at Heathrow or Gatwick is the right one. They are proven capital markets players and are best placed to deliver.
