Clydesdale Bank will seek to further tap the residential mortgage-backed securities market—possibly in the U.S.—this year after returning with a privately-placed issue, Lanark Master Issuer 2012-1, this week.
The trade saw its senior EUR615 million ($813 million) 1A1 tranche, rated AAA by Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s Investors Service, price at three-month EURIBOR plus 195 basis points. There was also an unrated Z-note sized at £256.5 million ($405.7 million).
“Secured funding will be our stable term funding,” said Lee Kelly, head of structured funding at Clydesdale. “Given this was a £500 million sterling equivalent, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that we would look to come [to market] before year-end.”
Kelly said future deals from the Lanark platform would also have the capability to be sold into the U.S. on a 144A basis, noting the strong reliance of U.K. RMBS instruments on dollar investors over the past year.
SI first reported in January that the Scotland-based retail lender was eyeing a relaunch of its postponed Lanark deal this year (SI, 1/10). The planned return was put on hold in December after S&P cut ratings on Clydesdale and its parent firm National Australia Bank. Clydesdale responded by tweaking a series of contracts in the Lanark structure to comply with S&P’s beefed-up counterparty....