Sweden

Pohjola Bank changed direction to issue tier two debt in Swedish kronor on Tuesday, after being kept out of the euro market in the second quarter.

SEB’s head of corporate finance will be leaving after nine years with the bank to work for a private equity firm in Stockholm, with SEB looking internally and externally to fill his job.

Swedbank’s sharp five year floater was the only FIG supply in euros this week, but bankers believe the market will only suffer a short summer drought before supply ramps up this month.

Stadshypotek became the second Swedish bank this year to issue a sterling floating rate covered bond, pricing its deal in line with Canadian issuers.

Nordea Bank has appointed a new chief executive and chief operating officer, with Christian Clausen set to step down in November.

Swedbank kept euro denominated FIG supply ticking over with a five year floater on Tuesday, but bankers said the deal’s small oversubscription would do little to convince others to pull the trigger this week.

After the disastrous reception of Royal Bank of Canada’s seven year covered bond on Wednesday, SCBC followed with another seven year on Thursday. The infrequent issuer raised half the amount than SEB and paid 5bp more, but did the right thing by not compounding the problem left by RBC.

SCBC mandated leads for a seven year covered bond on Wednesday, the second in that tenor from Sweden and the third in that tenor overall this week. The transaction comes as RBC struggled to build strong demand for its seven year after Bund yields soared. Yorkshire Building Society has responded to concerns around volatility and mandated leads for a shorter maturity.

Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken returned to the covered bond market on Tuesday after an 18 month absence to print a €1bn deal with a longer maturity, tighter spread and lower new issue premium than Toronto Dominion was able to do a day earlier.

Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB) has mandated leads for its first covered bond since October 2013 and the third only Swedish deal to be issued this year. The deal is likely to offer three times the coupon of the previous Swedish covered bond.

Swedbank returned to covered bonds for its third funding exercise on Wednesday but decided against issuing off its 144A programme to launch in Reg S format for its first dollar benchmark of the year. The decision came as euro rates markets suffered a further bout of intraday volatility following last week’s extraordinary instability. And as Caffil tapped its 35s.

Draft Swedish regulation, requiring compulsory repayment of mortgage loans until the loan to value ratio gets below 50%, has been dropped. However, lending practices had already become stricter, so dropping the requirement changes little, said LBBW research on Thursday.