A syndicate banker away from Skipton Building Society’s leads said the deal made “perfect sense” following two successive successful euro benchmarks from UK issuers this week, Lloyds Bank and Virgin Money on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.

“Even though Brexit is with us to stay, it’s not as important as it was,” he said. “We also saw Nationwide’s GBP AT1 yesterday and Barclays’ today, and the fact that these work is a very, very good sign for the market.”

Skipton leads Barclays, BNP Paribas, HSBC and UniCredit went out this morning went guidance of mid-swaps plus 28bp over and around an hour and 40 minutes later, reported books in excess of EUR500m. The spread was ultimately set at 26bp over on the back of EUR670m of orders.

The banker away from the leads saw fair value for the Skipton issue at around 21bp, taking into account the issuer’s outstanding 2023 paper and Coventry Building Society’s curve. He said the smaller book size than other supply this week was understandable.

“Given that the market was supportive, they perhaps could have hoped for more, but as it’s a building society, you can’t compare it to Lloyds’ deal,” he said, “and the negative-yielding outcome may have made some investors think twice.

“And with the amount of market activity this week, fighting for investors’ attention is tough.”

A lead syndicate banker said that the transaction was a positive result.

“It shows that UK plc is very much in business,” he said. “They had a very high quality order book and delivered their target size at a decent spread, so this is great for the sector.”

The deal is the second euro benchmark from the issuer, after it sold a EUR500m five year in September 2018.

Liberbank leads BBVA, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole and UBS went out this morning with guidance of the mid-swaps plus 40bp area for the Spanish issuer’s inaugural euro benchmark, a 10 year trade. They set the spread at 35bp over and the size at EUR1bn on the back of orders over EUR1.5bn. It was priced to yield 0.260%.

The issuer roadshowed in relation to a debut back in November 2018, but a syndicate banker at one of the leads said market conditions put the brakes on Liberbank’s plans.

“At the back-end of last year the market was not very conducive,” he said, “and then earlier this year there was all this noise around the Unicaja merger, so the potential issue was not prioritized by the issuer.”

In December 2018, Unicaja and Liberbank confirmed they were in talks about a potential merger, but in May talks were called off after the banks could not reach agreement.

The lead syndicate banker said that the back-up in rates after Thursday’s ECB meeting strongly encouraged the issuer to proceed with the transaction.

“The market is more conducive now,” he added, “and there is good momentum for peripheral names given the more positive terms of the TLTROs, and the issuer reignited the project yesterday.”

He added that pricing slightly above the Bonos curve helped demand.

“Obviously this makes sense for investors on a relative value basis,” he said. “Pricing at mid-swaps plus 35bp for EUR1bn, it’s is an outstanding result for their inaugural trade, even if it was a long time in the making.”

Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) announced a mandate for a 10 year public sector Pfandbrief today that is expected tomorrow (Thursday). ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, Helaba, NatWest and UniCredit are leads.

Helaba’s last benchmark was a EUR750m five year in June, which set a then-record low for euro benchmark covered bond yields of minus 0.227%.