Throughout the sovereign crisis, covered bonds were a remarkably stable asset class that at the same time offered a wide range of investors an attractive investment case, write Crédit Agricole CIB covered bond analysts in their outlook for 2015.
A new Norwegian Act on Financial Institutions being considered by parliament will amend the country’s covered bond framework so that covered bond issuers are treated the same as banks in the event of insolvency, and will also repeal Norway’s securitisation law.
The recent CBPP3-inspired momentum of the covered bond market appeared to have dried up over the past week, with demand for a Eu1bn 10 year OP Mortgage Bank benchmark last Friday (21 November) falling short of expectations amid other senior and covered bond issues being pulled.
Spreads on Danish one year ARM bonds widened by up to 10bp over the first three days of the latest refinancing auction season this week and bid-to-cover ratios hit lows, despite a sharp fall in supply, with market participants struggling to remember such turbulent conditions and understand the moves.
DNB Boligkreditt sold a Eu500m (Nkr4.23bn) seven year floating rate covered bond last Friday (7 November), building on reverse enquiries to open a new FRN maturity after having tapped a five year through 2014.
Members of the SpareBank 1 alliance in Norway are setting up their own covered bond issuers as a back-up to SpareBank 1 Boligkreditt (SpaBol) because of large exposure limit regulation.
Moody’s upgraded Eika Boligkreditt mortgage covered bonds from Aa2 to Aa1 on Thursday of last week.
The LCR Delegated Act from the European Commission is finally out. No, really, it is! Seriously, we are talking about the real thing, not just another leaked document but the final version, the one that will be relevant in the real world and not only talked about in Brussels and a number of European capitals.
Covered bonds’ anticipated favourable treatment in the Liquidity Coverage Requirement was confirmed by the European Commission on Friday, with the highest rated covered bonds eligible for up to 70% of liquidity buffers as Level 1 assets and others in Level 2A or 2B.
The completion of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) rules among various countries is proceeding, with the US releasing its final policy. On the euro front, another document was leaked, with most parameters remaining the same.