ING Bank Australia opened books for its its first covered bond issuance today (Thursday), a dual tranche Australian dollar deal comprising a three year floating rate note and a five year fixed rate issue, with pricing expected tomorrow.

The subsidiary of the Dutch ING Group announced its intention to enter the covered bond market on 2 August with a mandate for investor meetings ahead of the debut, finally crystallising plans first mooted some years ago.

Today, leads DBS, Deutsche, ING, NAB and RBC launched the three year floating rate tranche with guidance of the three month BBSW plus 60bp area, and the five year fixed tranche with guidance of the swaps plus 80bp area. The deal is expected to be priced tomorrow (Friday).

On 2 August, ING Bank Australia was assigned provisional triple-A covered bond ratings for its new A$7.5bn programme by Moody’s and Fitch, with the latter rating agency basing its analysis on an assumed A$1bn (EUR634m) deal split over three and five year maturities.

ING Bank Australia becomes the fourth covered bond issuer in the ING Group, joining, ING Bank in the group’s home Dutch market, ING Belgium, and ING DiBa in Germany.