Deutsche Bank’s subsidiary in Spain has issued Eu6bn of cédulas hipotecarias split equally into five tranches in what is understood to be the first Spanish covered bond issuance by the bank.

Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores (CNMV) filings indicate that Deutsche Bank SAE yesterday (Thursday) issued five Eu1.2bn tranches of cédulas maturing between 2015 and 2024. The issuance is understood to have been retained.

Standard & Poor’s this (Friday) morning assigned the covered bonds a AA+ rating and indicated that yesterday’s Eu6bn is the only outstanding issuance off the programme.

The programme has been assigned to Category 1 under S&P’s methodology and determined to have “low” asset-liability mismatch (ALMM) risk, meaning that it achieve six notches of uplift. The rating agency said that overcollateralisation is sufficient to sustain the maximum potential uplift and that the AA+ rating “reflects this maximum ratings uplift capped by the sovereign rating on Spain”. The covered bonds are on negative outlook, reflecting the negative outlook of Spain’s rating.

Deutsche Bank is not the first international group to have a Spanish subsidiary issue covered bonds – Barclays Bank SA debuted in the cédulas market in 2009. Its covered bonds were last month downgraded from AAA to AA+, with S&P’s downgrade of Spain to BBB+ the driver of the cut.