Germany

Berlin Hyp sold over half a EUR500m eight year green Pfandbrief to investors classified as green at the tightest spread of any euro benchmark covered bond this year on Wednesday, in what head of funding and IR Bodo Winkler hailed as an amazing result, even if yield moves made pricing “a little bizarre”.

Landesbank Baden-Württemberg aims to build green benchmark curves, after having expanded and more than doubled its green bond portfolio, and wrapped up EUR750m senior and $750m covered bonds in the space of a week, the latter – the first dollar green covered bond – attracting unusually strong demand inside fair value.

Berlin Hyp has enhanced its green bond reporting by calculating carbon emission savings based on the specific energy mix of buildings in its green finance portfolio, in what is understood to be a first for a green bond issuer. The lender has meanwhile transferred its Green Pfandbrief brand to support the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks in promoting the product.

DZ Hyp will at the beginning of 2019 begin work on a green bond project, after the issuer on Tuesday launched its first benchmark Pfandbrief since being created from the merger of DG Hyp and WL Bank to become Germany’s biggest covered bond issuer.

MünchenerHyp became the first issuer to have sold both green and social covered bonds on Tuesday, with the launch of a EUR500m “Ecological ESG” deal that should be the first of annual issues, according to its head of debt IR, although plans for social bonds may take some time to come to fruition.

Four years after launching the first ever sustainable covered bond, MünchenerHyp is preparing to launch a benchmark Ecological ESG Pfandbrief, with a green retail loan it launched in 2015 enabling it to be the first German issuer to include residential mortgages in its use of proceeds.

Commerzbank attracted as much as EUR1.25bn of orders from over 100 investors to its first green bond yesterday (Tuesday), a EUR500m five year senior non-preferred benchmark with proceeds earmarked for renewable energy financing.

Berlin Hyp achieved its highest ever foreign distribution with a EUR500m seven year green Pfandbrief on Friday, after having waited out an “awful” market on Thursday to then attract EUR950m of orders at a level reflecting the “new world”, according to Bodo Winkler, its head of funding and investor relations.