Wuraging through issuance statistics this week for new bonds from European banks comes across very few. And if you find bank bonds that have just been sold, such as from DZ Bank, LBBW, ING or Helaba, then the Bloomberg news agency put the word “sole” after them. This usually means something like: only one bank, usually itself, has brought this bond to the investors and did not need the help of other banks in a syndicate. This is not due to the fact that bank bonds are currently selling like hot cakes, but rather to the small issue volumes.
Banks are currently lending each other money on the interbank market for short periods, which is taken as a sign that a financial crisis is not imminent. The market for large and longer-dated bank bonds, known as the “primary market” in technical jargon, is currently almost dead. “There has been little major primary activity since March 13,” reports Christian Keller, who heads the trading business for the US bank Citigroup in Frankfurt . March 13 was the Monday after the weekend that the Silicon Valley bank went bankrupt and the German financial regulator also closed the German SVB branch.