Toronto-Dominion Bank sold a $1.75bn five year issue yesterday (Thursday) and Lloyds Bank a £500m seven year today, with the chunky deals offering the respective issuers decent funding at a time when euro benchmarks have been struggling to take off.

TD is understood to have attracted some $2.3bn of orders for the $1.75bn (Eu1.60bn, C$2.19bn) 144A offering, which is the second-biggest single tranche covered bond of 2015 after a $2bn deal for RBC on 29 January.

Leads BNP Paribas, JP Morgan, RBC and TD priced the issue at 37bp over mid-swaps after IPTs of the 40bp area and guidance of 37bp-38bp over. The new issue premium seen at around 4bp, with TD September 2019s at around 32bp over and RBC February 2020s around 34bp over.

Syndicate officials away from the leads put the funding level around 5bp inside what TD might have achieved in euros, although they said that the dollar market appeared to be offer more potential right now.

“I presume TD needs dollars anyway, so in that respect it’s a win-win for them,” said one, “and $1.75bn is pretty huge versus what is getting done in euros, especially in this tone where the market isn’t so good.”

Another banker in Europe lamented the relative performance of the two markets.

“That’s the problem we’re facing at the moment,” he said. “The dollar market isn’t necessarily in better shape, but the yields are more enticing for investors – witness what happened with WL Bank even out in 12 years this week.”

The other syndicate official said it remained to be seen whether the dollar market would retain its superiority.

“I guess TD’s success was partly a function of there not having been so much supply,” he said. “The question is how deep the bid is.”

Lloyds broke with a string of floating rate notes in sterling this year, mainly in the three year maturity, by selling the first sterling fixed rate benchmark of 2015 today (Friday), a £500m seven year covered bond. Leads HSBC, Lloyds, RBC and Santander priced the issue at 53bp over Gilts.

A banker away from the leads said that it looked like “a great trade”.

“It’s the first fixed rate sterling for some time and they have capitalised on that very well,” he said. “We had seen a lot of three and five year FRNs and it’s good that someone stepped up to do fixed.

“I think a few other issuers are looking.”

He noted that the sterling market offers competitive funding versus euros in certain maturities and another banker noted that the basis swap has moved in favour of sterling in five years, for example.

Euros meanwhile remained quiet, although a syndicate official said that secondaries had been stable for a day or two now and sentiment had improved today. He suggested some issuers could look at the market early next week, but said that the market could remain very quiet given the impending quarter-end and Easter holiday, and another agreed.

“I expect a quiet week to 10 days,” he said. “We are aware of a few issuers who are looking very closely, but our recommendation is that they shouldn’t go next week unless they need to.”