Market participants said confirmation this (Friday) morning that Greece’s PSI had succeeded was not helping fuel covered bond supply, while CBPP2 experienced a mid-week lift despite no corresponding primary market settlements.

According to one syndicate official, markets were lacking direction today on the back of the Greek news, which he said had already been priced in.

“There was nothing surprising, and I think markets expected it,” he said, adding that the pipeline was very light.

“With low overall yields, I can’t see much issuance happening,” he added.

Yorkshire Building Society has been on a roadshow with HSBC after releasing 2011 financial results.

“The only name I know of is Yorkshire, and I expect it mid to end of March,” said another syndicate official. “The market is still in favour of new issues, and investors would like to see fresh names, I think.”

A banker close to Yorkshire said the roadshow was a regular annual post-results exercise, and he could not comment on when or if the building society would be coming to market.

According to another syndicate official, today was a “sit and fester day” with equities flat and yields stable.

“It’s old school Friday,” he said. “All we can do is stay hopeful that more gets done next week.”

The prospect of DNB Boligkreditt launching a 10 year deal, which had been discussed earlier in the week, was said to have receded.

“I heard DNB was thinking about a longer dated maturity but they decided against it,” said a banker. “It depends on the absolute yield levels.

“Because of the low absolute yield levels, the outcome for investors is too low to create momentum,” he said, adding that a level of around 60bp over mid-swaps had been floated, which would equate to a coupon of less than 3%.

“Three percent is not an attractive coupon,” he said.

The European Central Bank reported an increase of Eu322m in its covered bond purchase programme on Wednesday, the fourth highest overall day’s increase and the highest increase that does not correspond to the settlement of new benchmark issuance.

The three higher day’s increases were reported the day after eligible issuance settled, but with no eligible benchmarks settling on Wednesday, the latest large increase should be accounted for by secondary market purchases.

The Eu322m increase contributed the bulk of a Eu476m increase in the CBPP2 total this week, with sub-Eu100m increases reported on other days. The total rose from Eu7.496bn last Friday (2 March) to Eu7.972bn today. According to figures from Royal Bank of Scotland analysts, this puts CBPP2 Eu6.428bn behind a theoretical run-rate based on average daily purchases of Eu160m being necessary for its Eu40bn to be spend by the time the programme ends in October.

Only two CBPP2-eligible benchmarks are yet to settle: a Eu1.5bn seven year Société Générale SFH deal and a Eu500m seven year ING-DiBa Pfandbrief. SG’s deal settles on Tuesday and any buying under CBPP2 would be included in Wednesday’s release, while ING-DiBa’s settles on Wednesday and any purchases would be captured in Thursday’s release. Central banks and SSAs were said by SG’s leads to have been allocated 5% of the deal, although not necessarily reflecting solely Eurosystem buying under CBPP2, and central banks were said to have taken 19% of ING DiBa’s.

ECB president Mario Draghi noted yesterday afternoon the impact its two three year LTROs have had on bank funding markets, saying that they had been “an unquestionable success”.

“The risk environment has improved enormously,” he said, noting that senior unsecured and covered bond markets have reopened, but also how complex the consequences of the operations are.