The concept of covered bonds has existed for about 200 years. This instrument was initiated by Frederick the Great of Prussia (Germany), with the creation of “Pfandbriefe.” The underlying idea was to help project financing. Typically, a bank issuing pfandbriefe bonds would be able to collateralize the bonds with some underlying assets already on its balance sheet.
In simple terms, a covered bond is a financial product whose creditors are benefiting from a pledge. This pledge usually corresponds to mortgage or public sector loans that are on the balance sheet of the issuing bank.
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Posted in Finance, Investment
Optimizing return on regulatory and economic capital is a key concern for bank portfolio managers. Reducing the capital backing existing holdings can help redeploy the capital to more profitable businesses, shrink the balance sheet, or boost returns.
One obvious way of reducing the capital held is to sell a particular set of assets that are capital-intensive. But these assets tend also to be the ones that yield more and selling them could harm the return on the banks portfolios. CDO technology enables banks to keep most of the returns while significantly reducing regulatory capital.
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Posted in Finance, Strategy