Bankinter yesterday (Tuesday) sold a Eu1bn 10 year cédulas hipotecarias that an official at the issuer said was supported by the ECB unveiling its sovereign QE programme and the publication of positive results for the bank last week.

Bankinter took advantage of a positive market reaction to the ECB’s announcement of a sovereign QE programme on Thursday and also avoided facing any problems resulting from the victory of anti-austerity party Syriza in Greece in elections on Sunday.

“We were monitoring the market,” said Antonio Muñoz, head of ALM and funding at Bankinter. “Our brilliant results were presented on Thursday and we were also expecting a very positive outcome from Draghi’s Q&A on the same day.

“We didn’t issue on Friday mainly because of uncertainty caused by the Greek elections on Sunday. These elections weren’t negative for issuance since demand for high-rated products with some spread remains very strong.”

Leads Bankinter, Barclays, HSBC, JP Morgan and Santander set initial price thoughts at the mid-40s over mid-swaps and attracted almost Eu2bn of demand, encouraging the issuer to tighten the level and set guidance at the 40bp area.

“At the level we went out with, the order book grew extremely fast so we realised we could go below 40bp in the spread,” said Muñoz. “Later on, when Eu1.8bn was reached, we tightened by 2bp and investors got comfortable with such a level. The investors didn’t withdraw their orders or reduce them – except for one or two cases.”

The deal was Bankinter’s first covered bond issuance since 2013, when the bank launched two Eu500m deals, in January and April, five and three year issues, respectively. This time the issuer opted to launch a single deal with a longer tenor because of historically low IRS levels, Muñoz said.

He said that the Eu1bn deal meets a substantial portion of the bank’s funding target for 2015. Last year Bankinter only tapped the senior market with one issue and he said that this was because the bank was starting to build its senior curve.

“Eu1bn was our intended benchmark size and we got orders above Eu1.8bn, so we consider it was a successful exercise,” he said.

“We are now done for this first part of the year, although we are always looking at the market,” he added. “At Bankinter, we are a small but good bank, our capital is very good, so if we see levels are tightening much more and we see an opportunity we will look at it closely.”