Niek Allon
Head of Treasury
Nationale-Nederlanden Bank (NN Bank)
Morten Bækmand Nielsen
Head of ALM & Investor Relations
Nykredit
Ralf Berninger
Head of Investor Relations & Sustainability
SFIL
Luca Bertalot
Secretary General
European Mortgage Federation - European Covered Bond Council (EMF-ECBC
Elena Bortolotti
Head of Covered Bond Structuring & Advisory
Natixis CIB
Thomas Cohrs
Head of Financial Institutions, Capital Markets
Helaba
Florian Eichert
Head of Covered Bond and SSA Research
Credit Agricole CIB
Miguel Garcia de Eulate
Head of Treasury and Capital Markets
Caja Rural de Navarra
Jennifer Johnson
Deputy Secretary General
European Mortgage Federation and European Covered Bond Council (ECBC)
Richard Kemmish
Editorial Consultant
FT Live Fixed Income Events
Jennifer Levy
Executive Director, Covered Bond Research
Natixis
Friedrich Luithlen
Head of Debt Capital Markets
DZ BANK
Julien Marchand
Head of Origination FI/SSA
NORD/LB
Stefano Patruno
Head of Regulatory Impact Assessment, Intesa Sanpaolo
Jakob Reithmann
Portfolio Manager
MEAG
Patrick Seifert
Head of Primary Markets and Global Syndicate
LBBW
Lily Shum
Covered Bond Advisor
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC)
Henrik Stille
Portfolio Manager
Nordea Investment Management
Anthony Tobin
MD, European Head of Syndicate and Frequent Borrower Origination
RBC
Rada Tomova
Associate Director
EBRD
Patrick Widmayer
Vice President, Senior Credit Officer
Moody's Ratings
Peter Wong
Treasury Portfolio Manager
Nationwide Building Society
We asked our advisory board…
Every year at the congress I enjoy the dynamism and variety of conversations on covered bonds and the chance to celebrate our markets with all those involved in keeping this evolving market healthy and vibrant. I also look forward to opportunities to speak to new participants on the market be it new investors, issuers from newer jurisdictions and new trading desks to hear their thoughts and ideas.
Pete Wong
Meeting the whole Covered Bond community in one place and enjoying the days with excellent networking opportunities.
Julien Marchand
The panels. There are a lot of speakers that I really want to hear the opinions of.
Richard Kemmish
The venues as well as clients / friends
Florian Eichert
Networking with other covered bond stakeholders
Henrik Stille
The usual Covered Bond tribe magical pathos
Luca Bertalot
Meeting investors (and also other issuers as well as the broader Covered Bond community). Maintaing the sense of community through informal exchanges is key to the success of the event.
Miguel Garcia de Eulate
To meet the covered bond community again in the beautiful surroundings of Porto!
Niek Allon
I have never been to Porto so I am always very excited to visit a new city. I am looking forward to visiting places of interest and enjoying the delicious Portuguese food & wine.
Elena Bortolotti
Connecting with colleagues, hearing the latest industry news and market developments
Rada Tomova
Reconnecting with friends and colleagues from the covered market in a new (hopefully relaxed) environment in Porto
Anthony Tobin
Reconnecting with the Portuguese community, meeting in person usual suspects and new kids on the block
Patrick Seifert
Which jurisdiction do you think is over-supplying (if any)? And why?
Anonymous*
If anything, I would consider most markets jurisdictions to actually have undersupplied for a number of reasons (spread widening, lagging development of underlying asset markets, etc.)
When speaking to investors and looking at issuance volumes one could say that French Issuers have over-supplied. Personally, I believe they have pre-funded which is not a bad thing given the political uncertainties earlier this year.
It is difficult to say if there is really an oversupply, but based on the ECBC factbook statistics, France has shown a significant increase in issuance from 2022 to 2023. In fact, it has surpassed Denmark as the country with the highest amount of outstanding covered bonds. Therefore, if there is a potential oversupply in any jurisdiction, it would likely be in France in my opinion.
France, feels like there’s a French deal every week when the market is open (might be wise given the political situation)
Germany. 1: Lots of supply. 2: More direct competitors with SSA - which is seriously over-supplied. 3: Over-reliance on narrow bund/swap spreads to look cheap to swaps. 4: Insufficient IR work.
Austria
German speaking markets
France
Korea, Slovakia, Norway
France and Germany, huge issuance amount and many transactions with filling the available limits with investors
I do not see oversupply in the market
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
An archaeologist
Luca Bertalot
A doctor. Now I listen to investors
Miguel Garcia de Eulate
A vet!
Rada Tomova
I wanted to be a teacher or an architect so not sure how I ended up being a banker! 😉
Elena Bortolotti
Like many young boys I wanted to become a professional football player.
Niek Allon
Unbelievably so – a banker (or an astronaut) 😉
Thomas Cohrs
More or less what I am today i.e. a portfolio manager. From a young age I was interested in a lot of different things (to the extent that I regularly read every article in the newspaper) so making a living reading the news is quite cool.
Jakob Reithmann
Whilst I have friends who had ambitions to be astronauts I was slightly more grounded. I enjoyed my fruits as a kid, watermelons specifically, and I aspired to setup a fruit processing plant that would automate the removal of seeds as they were interrupting my indulgence. I hope that the congress would be a place where seeds are sow and the community will have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of their labour in this market… 😃
Pete Wong
What has been the highlight of your summer?
As always, enjoying the time with the family, but this year it was special, given that it were the first holidays together with my father and brother for more than a decade and the first holidays with 3 generations on my family.
Julien Marchand
My highlight of this summer has been the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. Overcoming threats, negative headlines and French election outcome, fortune favoured the braves and displayed the beauty of European values to the world (saying as French passport holder)
Patrick Seifert
The highlight of my summer was spending quality time with my family in the beautiful province of Friesland.
Niek Allon
My summer was spent in South America where the state of housing is a very interesting one…
Thomas Cohrs
Hiking in the alps
Henrik Stille
Coldplay's concert in Munich!
Luca Bertalot
Summery pool days and barbecues in our garden while most of the neighbours off on holidays (in other words, it was super calm and peaceful)
Florian Eichert
My second son’s 11th birthday was definitely the highlight of the summer. We celebrated that with only my wife and the 4 kids at a lonely beach on an island in the North Sea. It was a perfect day.
Fritz Luithlen