Hamburg Commercial Bank (HCOB) is buying back around €333m of Pfandbriefe following a tender offer for three issues that ended on Tuesday, with some €244m of the accepted amount accounted for by the shortest-dated bond in the exercise.

The issuer (formerly HSH Nordbank) launched the offer on Tuesday of last week (29 September), in its third such exercise this year.

The bulk of the bonds bought back in the latest tender are €244.239m of a 0.125% February 2021 public sector Pfandbrief (ISIN DE000HSH5YK0), of which €339.812m was outstanding before the latest offer. Only €10.077m of a €500m 0.75% October 2021 mortgage Pfandbrief (DE000HSH4UX4) was bought back. These two issues were the subject of any-and-all offers.

€78.230m of a 0.375% April 2023 mortgage Pfandbrief (DE000HSH5Y29)) was bought back. HCOB had tendered for up to €259.529m of this issue, thereby ensuring that its size after the offer would at least €500m, given that €759.529m had been outstanding.

Florian Eichert, head of covered bond and SSA research at Crédit Agricole, said that although the headline acceptance rate was around 30%, this was skewed by the high take-up on the shortest issue, with the overall results more in line with the modest outcomes of other Pfandbrief buy-backs earlier this year.

“As such, we would not take the results as strong encouragement to other issuers,” he said.

BNP Paribas and UniCredit were dealer managers, and Lucid Issuer Services was tender agent.