Royal Bank of Canada sold a $2bn (Eu1.48bn/C$2.06bn) five year issue yesterday (Tuesday) to reopen the US dollar covered bond market after two months without supply, after having done the same when it in mid-July sold the first deal under Canada’s new covered bond legislative framework.

RBC is understood to have priced the SEC-registered covered bond at 43bp over mid-swaps, the tight end of guidance of 43bp-45bp over. Barclays, Citi, and RBC were joint lead managers and gathered around $2.75bn of orders for the deal.

It is the joint largest US dollar benchmark covered bond this year alongside deals for Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Norway’s DNB.

The deal is RBC’s second US dollar benchmark covered bond in just over two months, and its fourth benchmark covered bond in that period, after it went on a funding spree in the asset class over the summer months following registration of its programme under Canada’s new covered bond legal framework in early July.

It inaugurated the country’s new legislative regime with a $1.75bn three year trade on 16 July, the last covered bond to have hit the US market before today’s deal, and then went on to sell benchmark covered bonds in euros and Australian dollars. Sandwiched between RBC’s US dollar and euro covered bonds was a Yankee senior unsecured transaction.

Its peer Bank of Montreal held investor meetings, working with Barclays, around the time of a covered bond industry gathering in Barcelona the week of 9 September. It does not yet have a covered bond programme registered with Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp (CMHC). Bank of Nova Scotia, which does, tapped the euro market in senior unsecured format yesterday, pricing a Eu700m three year floating rate note at 33bp over Euribor.