BondMarker: Rabo the best issuer, BNP Paribas the best arranger

BondMarker is a new tool for the covered bond market, exclusive to GlobalCapital, that rates the success of covered bonds on a scale of zero to 10 across a range of criteria: timing, pricing and distribution.  

Half of the mark is derived from a survey based on the average score given by market participants.  

The other half of the mark is automatically calculated using a range of metrics — such as the deal’s subscription ratio, its performance, the granularity of the order book and the transaction’s size (see here for more details).

If only two people or fewer have voted for any single deal, the survey score is ignored and the automatic score is doubled to give a number out of 10.   

The score for each deal can be found in the Covered Bonds Priced Deals Database.    

With a BondMarker score of 9.76, Rabobank is leading the way for the most highly rated deal of the year with its €2bn 10 year.

With a rating of 9.38 and 9.26, Sparebank 1’s €1.25bn 10 year and Société Générale €1bn eight year come a close second and third.

With a rating of 9, National Australia Bank’s €1.25bn seven year leads the way in the seven year tenor and among all non-European issuers.

The second and third most highly rated seven year deals were issued by La Banque Postale and LF Hyp.

And in the five year, deals from Credit Mutuel and Banca Monte Dei Paschi di Siena are equal first with a 9.26 rating, while Deutsche Pfandbriefbank is third.

The covered bond league tables for all deals above €500m show that LBBW is currently leading the way with a 7.3% market share and 15 deals.

However, when it comes to the quality of deals worked on, as depicted by the average score of deals that various lead managers have worked on, then BNP Paribas is leading the way with an average of 8.36.

In second place comes HSBC, with a score of 7.45, followed by Deutsche Bank with an average score of 7.23. See table below for top 10.

If a dealer's BondMarker score is multiplied by the volume of euro covered bond deals that a bank has arranged, then its position tends to resemble the actual league tables more closely — but not completely.

The ranking of LBBW, Natixis, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and NatWest Markets remains unchanged. However, Barclays rises from 4th to 3rd place, BNP Paribas from 9th to 8th and UniCredit from 5th to 4th.

The fact that Crédit Agricole and Société Générale fare less well could simply be because they worked on more deals at the start of the month, when market conditions were worse and covered bond marks were accordingly lower.