Press release

The European Covered Bond Council (ECBC) is pleased to announce the establishment of a new Working Group focusing on global issues in the covered bond market.

The ECBC Global Issues Working Group was launched due to the high level of interest expressed by ECBC members from various nonEEA jurisdictions such as Brazil, Canada, Singapore and South Korea.

The Working Group held its inaugural meeting in Singapore on 7 March 2016, and today’s ECBC Steering Committee meeting in Copenhagen reaffirmed that the overarching aim of the Working Group will be to enhance transparency and convergence in covered bonds globally.

The ECBC Steering Committee also formally appointed Colin Chen, Chairman for the Association of Banks in Singapore’s (ABS) Standing Committee on Covered Bonds and Managing Director & Head of Structured Debts Solutions, DBS Bank, as the Chairman of the Global Issues Working Group for the mandate 2016-2019.

In commenting on the establishment of the new Working Group, Luca Bertalot, EMF-ECBC Secretary General, stated:

“Global issues are increasing their importance in the covered bond market and the ECBC is leading the expansion of the funding instrument to new markets and jurisdictions around the globe. The establishment of the new Global Issues Working Group will facilitate our work in developing synergies between traditional and emerging covered bond markets, and will help us serve covered bond issuer and investor communities even better globally.”

The new Working Group’s priorities will be presented to a wide group of covered bond stakeholders at the 23rd ECBC Plenary Meeting, which will take place in Copenhagen on 14 April 2016. The Agenda for this meeting is available here.

More information on the Working Groups and organisation of the ECBC can be found on the ECBC website: http://ecbc.hypo.org. The ECBC’s Covered Bond Comparative Database contains information on 35 covered bond jurisdictions globally: http://www.ecbc.eu/.