Spain

Banque AIG on Friday breached a Moody’s rating trigger in its role as liquidity facility provider for Cédulas TDA 5, FTA. However, the cédulas ratings have so far remained untouched by the breach.

Moody’s today (Thursday) assigned definitive Aaa long term ratings to the outstanding cédulas hipotecarias issued by Cajamar - Caja Rural, Sociedad Cooperativa de Credito.

Moody’s on Friday put the Aaa ratings of Dexia Sabadell’s cédulas territoriales on review for possible downgrade after cutting the bank’s long term rating from Aa2 to A2 and putting this on review for possible downgrade.

Spanish banks will be resilient to the global financial crisis, but the country’s economy faces painful adjustment. That was the message from speakers at Euromoney’s Spain in the Capital Markets conference in Madrid on Tuesday, where the fate of the country’s savings banks and their covered bonds also proved controversial.

Investors’ perceptions of the crises in Spain and Ireland are excessively pessimistic because of the way the media reports them, according to bankers at the Euromoney/ECBC Covered Bond Congress in Paris on Thursday.

In brief: Moody’s today (Wednesday) assigned provisional a triple-A rating to Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa’s cédulas hipotecarias.

Property company Martinsa-Fadesa’s insolvency, negative rating actions on financial institutions, and, at last, falling house prices – is this Spain’s economic slowdown turning into a hard landing, or just a case of overblown bad press? The Cover spoke to bankers and analysts to gauge sentiment in these testing times.

The 4% limit on covered bond issuance as a percentage of total liabilities is one of the most restrictive parts of the policy statement released by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation last week. The Cover spoke to the Independent Community Bankers of America about their views on the cap, and whether pooled issuance was a prospect in the US.

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.

In brief: Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa (BBK) has mandated leads for its debut euro covered bond.

Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo continued the Spanish march to increasingly wide levels when it priced its debut Eu1bn two year cédulas on Friday afternoon. Despite claims last week that this was damaging the wider market, one lead manager robustly defended the pricing, saying it should have no impact on core names.