insto - Australian financial markets

Global investors are snapping up covered bonds, with last week’s volume almost doubling that of the week before on world markets. An estimated US$5.7 billion of securities were sold or marketed around the world this week, according to Bloomberg data.

BNP Paribas Fund Services Australia has signed a multi-year agreement with Broadbridge Financial Solutions to use the company’s Global Proxy processing services for its clients in Australasia. BN Paribas already uses Broadbridge’s proxy services in its French-headquartered global securities services business, and is now rolling it out in Australasia. This will enable the bank to offer its clients an international model.

BNP Paribas Securities Services has combined all of its global custody assets in-house onto a single Asia Pacific platform. Approximately 30 clients, 250 portfolios, over 15,000 securities and almost A$30 billion in assets have been migrated.
The firm claims that its clients can now access to Continuous Linked Settlement for foreign exchange transactions, with client windows in the US and Europe complementing the Sydney based service teams.
The program was piloted in May 2009, with the first group of client accounts migrated in September 2009.
 

2009 wasn’t a bumper year for the syndicated loan market, but then that could be said of many other product sectors of the market as well. According to Thomson Reuters, the Australian loan market post a loss of 41.7 per cent over 2009 to reach US$44.8 billion in proceeds.

Last Thursday, CBA launched its first EUR transaction in 2010 - EUR1bn 4.375pct 10yr senior unsecured EMTN. The deal was also the first 10-year EUR senior trade by a financial institution in 2010.
Pricing:
• With a well oversubscribed orderbook of EUR2.4bn, the transaction was reoffered at Mid-Swap +98bpts, which is at the tight end of whisper guidance of Mid-Swap +105bpts.
• Despite the 7bpts tightening, the orderbook remained sticky losing only EUR100m of orders.
• In the secondary market the bonds tightened a further 4 bpts.
Distribution:
• 152 investors participated.

Bond market is off to a strong start in 2010, with three of the four major Australian banks going offshore with high volume offers and a number of Kangaroo increases and issuances.

Offshore: Yankee and Samurai
• NAB opens global benchmark debt market