The Covered Bond Report can exclusively reveal that managing editor Citizen Dayne did not hack anyone’s mobile phone when writing The Hackberry Chronicles for The News Of The Cover. His admission comes as an increasing number of books in the covered bond market have been revealed as works of fiction.

Dismissing calls for his resignation, the flame-haired media mogul said that playing fast and loose with the truth was standard practice among covered bond hacks. Dayne said that it should have been obvious to any users of the website that hacking e-mails from market participants’ Blackberrys, which the column claimed to have reproduced, was beyond the technical capabilities of The News of The Cover.

“If I gave anyone the impression that quotes appearing in The Hackberry Chronicles were taken from real e-mails, then I would like to apologise for the hurt I may have caused while at The News of The Cover,” said Dayne, dubbed “The Hard Man of EuroStreet” by a former editor of The Daily Fail’s capital markets weekly*.

“How was I to know that anyone would pay attention to what began life as the hurried scribblings of a hungover journalist in the Berlin Intercontinental the morning after an awards dinner?”

Dayne defended his actions by arguing that it should have been obvious that the columns were a work of fiction from their language. He said that syndicate officials would clearly never use expressions such as “a testament to the quality of the issuer”, “the right name at the right price”, or even “they could have priced the issue more tightly but wanted to leave something on the table for investors”.

However, when pressed as to whether Louis Hagen and Alex Sanchez-Pedreño had ever sung Vera Lynn favourite “We’ll meet again” as a duet, Dayne declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation into the German sense of humour.

“Ballacks”

The Verband des deutschen Pfußballs (vdp) has threatened Dayne with an invitation to its Central & Eastern European covered bond conference where the role of the Treuhänder in post-insolvency procedures will be explained in Serbo-Croat unless he retracts some of the more damaging claims he made in his time at The News of The Cover.

A particular bone of contention for the German association is Dayne’s reporting of Euro 2008, where the Spanish football team was gleefully reported to have recorded a glorious, historic and thoroughly deserved victory over Die Mannschaft. There are now claims that the achievements of the Spanish were wildly exaggerated and that they in fact lost the final in Vienna.

However, Dayne claims that on this occasion his reports of Spain’s strong showing, as reflected in his book on the tournament (A Load of Ballacks), were based on real telephone conversations with officials.

“I rang them throughout to find out how the Spaniards were doing and they assured me that they were performing well and would get the necessary result,” Dayne said. “How was I to know they were exaggerating?”

“Gracious”

The Football Standards Authority said that it would look into the claims, while the International Committee for Match Arbitration is discussing new rules on live reporting.

By default the Euro 2008 trophy could now be awarded to the Germans.

“So what do you plan to do to make your squads less inferior to and almost as good as the German football team, which is the best in the world,” said Dr Otmar Stickler, technical director of the vdp.

The Council for Bond Investors’ Complaints criticised Dayne’s behaviour. But while the Interminable Moaners Association called for full transcripts of Dayne’s notebooks to be made public, the CBIC said that this could only exacerbate the covered bond market’s reputation for navel-gazing.

The Royal Covered Bond Council has confirmed that, contrary to earlier claims by Dayne, neither its e-mails nor phones were hacked.

“It is crystal clear that nobody listens to us,” said the Right Honourable Christopher Batting. “It’s just not cricket.”

*Note: The Covered Bond Report’s managing editor wrote an occasional, mildly diverting column, The Blackberry Chronicles, between 2007 and 2010 in his previous position. Nothing in this article should be taken at face value.