Carsten Tirsbæk Madsen will in the new year take over as president of the Covered Bond & Mortgage Council, the umbrella organisation for the EMF and ECBC. Meanwhile, renewal of Labels for 2015 taking in two key changes is well underway after having begun last week.

Madsen, who is already European Covered Bond Council (ECBC) chairman, will take over the Covered Bond & Mortgage Council (CBMC) role from Antonio José González Bajar, real estate chief executive officer of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), whose term as president of the CBMC ends at the same time as his term as chairman of the European Mortgage Federation (EMF), on 31 December.

Bruno Deletré, director general of Crédit Foncier de France, will take over as chairman of the EMF for the 2015-2016 mandate.

Madsen is chief executive officer of BRFkredit and is a member of the board of the Association of Danish Mortgage Banks (Realkreditrådet) and the Nordic Assembly of Mortgage Banks, and of the advisory board of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. He is also chairman of the Covered Bond Label Foundation.

The Covered Bond Label Foundation has meanwhile already seen 58% of outstanding labels renewed for 2015 after having opened the renewal process last week, according to Luca Bertalot, secretary general of the EMF-ECBC and Label Administrator.

“The high rate of renewals and the constant updating of data available on the Label website is confirmation of the significance of this market instrument in enhancing transparency,” said Bertalot.

As previously reported, the Label Convention has been amended for 2015 to include an explicit reference to Article 129(7) on transparency, and to allow non-EEA labelling.

Three new elements have also been added to the Label website: a field where issuers can state whether their issuance is eligible for Level 1, Level 2A or Level 2B of LCRs; information on whether the pool is based in the EEA or not; and the highlighting of non-EEA bonds in italics.

As of last month, 81 labels had been granted for 2014 to 70 issuers in 13 countries, representing over 50% of outstanding covered bonds.