4 Sep 2024 TwentyFour Blog Investors and issuers vote with their feet in bond supply deluge Any market participants hoping for a quiet few days to ease back into “work mode” after the summer break have had to rapidly adjust their expectations. Read more
3 Sep 2024 TwentyFour Blog German elections offer fresh warning to politicians Given almost half of the world’s population resides in a country staging an election this year, 2024 was always likely to throw up a series of political headlines. Read more
2 Sep 2024 TwentyFour Blog Can we complain about ABS supply? The start of the school year ordinarily also marks the end of summer for the primary bond markets as issuance restarts, though this year feels rather different. Read more
12 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog ABS performance review - fundamental focus Headlines have painted a nervous picture of the health of consumers across Europe. Simultaneously, rating agencies have upgraded their outlook on the same consumer assets to neutral. The short story is that, although there has been a mild weakening in performance metrics, the consumer has held up well and is ahead of our base case expectations in almost all areas. Read more
9 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog AT1 calls - another one bites the dust Julius Baer announced a call of its $300m Additional Tier 1 (AT1) instrument. The bond had a coupon of 4.75%, and if not called it would switch to a new coupon of five-year Treasury yield plus 284 basis points (bps), so about 6.7% at the moment. Read more
8 Aug 2024 TwentyFour Blog European banks earnings season - the groundhog day We are coming towards the end of the reporting cycle for European banks for the first half of 2024. Unlike other quarterly reports, mid-year results are particularly useful in our view. They confirm the trends that we have already seen in the first half of the year, and thus validate or indeed put into question, the outlook that the management teams laid out for the full fiscal year. Read more
31 Jul 2024 TwentyFour Blog Growth trends look encouraging for central banks – and investors Second quarter growth data for the Eurozone on Tuesday reaffirmed the gradual uptick in the region’s trajectory relative to the pace seen across 2023, with quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) growth slightly higher than expectations at 0.3%. Read more
30 Jul 2024 TwentyFour Blog BoE: Lender of (not so) last resort Last week, the Bank of England (BoE) published a speech by its Executive Director for Markets, Victoria Saporta, in which she laid out the central bank’s evolving role as a lender to the UK banking system. More specifically, the speech highlighted how the BoE expects to see UK banks having a greater reliance on its funding facilities going forward. Read more
22 Jul 2024 TwentyFour Blog Astonishing July demand shows appetite for mezz ABS A consumer loan ABS issued last week by Consors Finanz, a fully-owned subsidiary of BNP Personal Finance, highlights the remarkable appetite investors are currently showing for mezzanine ABS bonds. Read more
16 Jul 2024 TwentyFour Blog Wages continue to rein in pace of ECB rate cuts Last month saw the European Central Bank (ECB) get their cutting cycle underway with a 25bp cut in the deposit rate to 3.75%. However, any expectations for a rapid series of reductions after the first move were tempered by President Christine Lagarde, who at the subsequent press conference was clear that the ECB could move in phases in which they left interest rates unchanged. Read more
8 Jul 2024 TwentyFour Blog French result supports European spreads but budget concerns remain After weeks of volatility following President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call snap parliamentary elections in France, markets were breathing a sigh of cautious relief on Monday after the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) underperformed the polls. Read more
3 Jul 2024 Outlook Why Europe has jumped ahead of the US for fixed income value The forecast-defying strength of the US economy has been one of the key drivers of financial markets in recent quarters, but as economic prospects diverge, Europe is where we see the better relative value in fixed income today. Read more