The Covered Bond Report Awards for Excellence Winners 2021

We are pleased to recognise the best of the covered bond market by announcing the winners of The Covered Bond Report Awards for Excellence 2021. Unfortunately, we have to announce these online again rather than in person, but we raise a virtual glass to all our winners!

As previously announced, the aim of The Covered Bond Report awards is to recognise those deals, institutions and initiatives that have been best in class, offered something different, or contributed to the development of the market, or simply, as the name implies, stood out as examples of excellence in covered bonds. The period covered by the awards is 1 June 2020 to 31 May 2021.

After several weeks of nominations, discussions with a cross-section of market participants – thank you to those who provided input – and our deliberations, we have selected 11 winners – fewer than last year, in line with market trends – and announced these on The Covered Bond Report on Friday.

Our roll of honour:

• Most impressive issuer: Nationwide Building Society
• Best euro issuer: Caffil
• Best debutant: Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall
• In recognition of its international issuance: Deutsche Pfandbriefbank (pbb)
• In recognition of its long dated issuance: MünchenerHyp
• Pioneer: Komerční banka
• Euro lead manager: LBBW
• Global lead manager: HSBC
• International house: Credit Suisse
• Advisory: Barclays
• Editor’s Award: Energy Efficient Mortgages Initiative

You may note that this year we have dispensed with deal awards, instead honouring more issuers for their overall achievements. We believe that, particularly in regards to the past 12 months, this is a better means of identifying and recognising the qualities that we seek to highlight through the awards, with the outcome of deals being more subject to prevailing market conditions and not necessarily reflecting the efforts and abilities of those behind the trades. These qualities may be more evident across a sustained period of time, or not only come through in a deal itself.

Furthermore, we have not found that beyond a Eurozone/non-Eurozone split, and at times currency-specific awards, there are reasonable ways of dividing issuers into different groups. We have therefore simply picked those issuers we believe deserve to win, and highlighted the theme for which they are being recognised. The difficulties of making reasonable and fair comparisons between different parties is also behind our restrained use of the term “best”. Finally, our investment bank awards may partly reflect achievements over the past 12 months, and partly the persistent strengths of the different winners.

We will be explaining more on the thinking behind each of our awards over the coming month in The Covered Bond Report.

While you might not necessarily agree with our thinking and may have chosen other names than those we have selected – and there were many strong candidates we had to leave out – we hope you can at least join us in wishing our winners, a hearty congratulations!