Aegon Bank sold a debut, Eu750m five year conditional pass-through covered bond today (Tuesday), taking over Eu850m of orders for a deal bankers said represented a solid result and fair pricing for the new Dutch issuer. Banco Popolare di Milano is meanwhile due with a 10 year OBG tomorrow.

Aegon announced its Eu5bn programme on 2 November, following fellow Dutch banks NIBC – which launched the first legislative conditional pass-through (CPT) covered bond in October 2013 – and Van Lanschot in adopting the structure.

After holding a roadshow promoting the programme last week, Aegon leads ABN Amro, Rabobank, RBS, SG and UniCredit launched the euro benchmark five year issue today with initial price thoughts of the 10bp over mid-swaps area this morning. They then moved to guidance of the 9bp area with orders in excess of Eu850m, before fixing the spread at 8bp.

“Overall, it’s a strong debut,” said a syndicate official at one of the leads. “The reception to the CPT is in line with what we saw in the other Dutch deals and clearly investors don’t have a problem with the structure.”

Syndicate officials at the leads said that in terms of the pricing they had positioned the deal between the more established Dutch issuers, ING and ABN Amro, which use soft bullet structures, and the newer CPT issuers, NIBC and Van Lanschot.

Seven year paper from ING and ABN was quoted in the minus high single-digits, mid, a lead syndicate official said, while NIBC and Van Lanschot 2022s were both at 3bp over.

“For a debut deal, a new issue premium of the mid to high single-digits is a very solid result, especially for an issuer than has made it clear that it will regularly return to the market,” he added.

Syndicate officials away from the leads said the new issue premium was slightly smaller, estimating the concession to be around 6bp based on the secondary levels of other Dutch CPT paper, also seeing Van Lanschot 2022s at 3bp, mid.

“For an inaugural issue that kind of premium is fair,” said one.

Banco Popolare di Milano is expected to launch a 10 year covered bond tomorrow, after having mandated Banca Akros, Barclays, Crédit Agricole, Credit Suisse and HSBC for the deal.

Syndicate officials said that the covered bond pipeline otherwise looked bare, and were unsure whether many more deals would arrive this week in spite of supportive conditions.

“I would not expect a busy week,” said one, “but after two good benchmark deals today, I would not rule it out.”