COUNTRY PROFILES: Case 1: Czech Republic; Case 2: Hungary; Case 3: Poland; Case 4: Slovakia
EARLY IN 2005, Hungary sent out RFPs for a large asset-backed securitization to finance a motorway infrastructure project. The issuer was to be Hungarian motorway operator AAK, and the deal, securitizing cashflows of as much as €3 billion from vignette stickers, which drivers purchase from the motorway operator and display in their car windows in order to travel on the motorway system, was slated to materialize later that year.
The transaction, though, has never happened. This has not been due to a lack of demand but rather to the intervention of the EU’s statistical agency, Eurostat. As part of wider moves to clamp down on one-off boosts to state budgets generated by asset-backed securitizations, Eurostat decided not to allow more than €11 billion of such financial engineering in Germany and Hungary to qualify...
