The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association has launched the latest association for European covered bond participants. The European Covered Bond Dealers Association (ECBDA) will represent traders in the European covered bond market and is the latest attempt to bring something approaching normality back to covered bonds. Sifma feels that the covered bond dealer community needs to establish a consensus view on how to get money moving again, and that the ECBDA will help achieve that. But is this the right time to be inaugurating a covered bond association when there is really no covered bond market to speak of?
Eleven banks have so far agreed to join Sifma’s new initiative, or 10 if you count Commerzbank and Dresdner as one. Each has paid €50,000 for the privilege,...
