NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank can look back on a successful year for its capital market business in 2018. League tables compiled for the sector put the bank among the top five arrangers on the German Pfandbrief market once again. NORD/LB came in third in the ranking of banks involved in arranging issues by the German federal states. Turning to the international market, NORD/LB also made it into the top three for euro covered bond benchmarks in various countries.
“We concluded an impressive range of interesting and innovative deals over the past year”, said Dr Hinrich Holm, Deputy Chairman of NORD/LB, who is responsible for the bank’s capital market business. “We aim to follow up on this success in 2019.” Dr Holm made specific reference to the following transactions:
- In late November NORD/LB was one of four joint lead managers involved in bringing the first cross-federal state municipal bond to the market, which was issued by five cities from three different federal states – Bochum, Celle, Essen, Emden and Saarbrücken. The issue volume of the Deutsche Städteanleihe Nr. 1 totalled € 200 million. The deal met with very high demand and was largely placed with banks, savings banks and funds in Germany and abroad.
- As one of two joint lead managers, NORD/LB was involved in the issue of the first green and socially responsible Schuldschein (promissory note) loan from the city of Hanover.
- February saw NORD/LB join forces with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan to place a benchmark bond issued by the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia worth € 1 billion. This deal was recently named as the Deal of the Year in the sub-sovereigns category by the renowned industry magazine Global Capital.
- As part of its international activities, NORD/LB’s transactions included the successful market placement of a benchmark covered bond worth € 500 million for United Overseas Bank (UOB) in Singapore. NORD/LB was one of four joint lead managers involved in the deal, again demonstrating its strong prowess on the covered bond market. NORD/LB is the only German bank to have been mandated for all the covered bond issues conducted in Singapore to date and therefore topped this particular league table.
- 2018 saw NORD/LB being awarded covered bond joint lead mandates for the first time by UOB, OCBC from Singapore, Sweden’s LF Hypothek, Canada’s Scotiabank and My Money Bank SCF, from France. In Germany, NORD/LB received its first covered bond joint lead mandates from Helaba and ING DiBa.
- In June 2018 NORD/LB was awarded its first leading mandate by the European Union in arranging the reopening of a euro benchmark bond.
- Finpair, which was hived off from NORD/LB last year, brought a green Schuldschein loan to the market for the Hanover-based utility company Enercity via a new digital funding platform. The Schuldschein, which had an issue volume of € 100 million, is being used to refinance projects in the field of renewable energies.
About NORD/LB
With total assets of € 155 billion, NORD/LB Norddeutsche Landesbank is one of Germany’s leading merchant banks. Its core business segments include structured finance in the energy and infrastructure sector, ship and aircraft finance, corporate client business, commercial real estate finance, capital market business and private and commercial client business including private banking. The Bank has headquarters in Hanover, Braunschweig and Magdeburg. NORD/LB also has branches in Bremen, Oldenburg, Hamburg, Schwerin, Düsseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart. Outside Germany, NORD/LB is active in Luxembourg with a covered bond bank (NORD/LB Covered Bond Bank) and also has offices in London, New York, Singapore and Shanghai.
