Briefs: Mutual banks raise senior debt, BT wrap platform leader to Hub24, CBA and NAB into fossil fu
Two mutual banks priced senior unsecured floating rate notes yesterday, each with a re-offer price of par, and each transaction expected to be repo-eligible. Police Bank Ltd, rated BBB+ by Fitch and BBB by S&P, priced A$25 million of 1-year floating rate notes, paying a coupon of 105 basis points over 3-month BBSW. Settlement date is 29 June 2017, with a final maturity on 29 June 2018. ANZ was the sole lead manager. Teachers Mutual Bank, rated Baa1 and BBB by Moody's and S&P, respectively, priced a A$100 million 3-year transaction, with a redemption date of 29 June 2020. The transaction was priced at a margin of 142 basis points over 3-month BBSW. The sole lead manager was Westpac. Craig Lawrenson, the head of SMSF at BT, has been appointed as the chief operations officer at Hub 24, a wealth management platform provider, effective mid-August, the SMSF Adviser reports. Lawrenson first joined Bankers Trust, now BT Financial Group, in 1996 and has held a number of roles across BT and Asgard platforms, investment accounting, operations and distribution. According to BT, Lawrenson was integrally involved with the development of the BT Wrap platform and more recently was responsible for product, offer and service design for BT's Panorama operating system, including the design and build of the system for advisers, accountants and trustees. The environmental campaigners at Market Forces have ranked 37 of the world's largest banks according to how much financial support they give to large-scale fossil fuel projects. Glancing along the Market Forces checklist, two Australian banks, Commonwealth Bank and NAB, scored straight "F's" across all four policy areas, sharing last place with banks from China and Japan. "Commbank was Australia's biggest lender to fossil fuels last year and, as a current lender to Adani, has yet to explicitly rule out funding their massive Carmichael coal mine," said Market Forces via its media release. The group asserts that not only does CBA rank as Australia's biggest fossil fuel financiers, it's among the world's largest such lenders (no. 33). Fitch Ratings has assigned expected ratings to the FP Ignition 2017 - B Trust, issuer of floating-rate notes backed by finance and operating vehicle leases. This lease, seeking almost NZ$2120 million is originated by Fleet Holding (NZ) Limited in New Zealand. The total underlying collateral pool consisted of 8,332 leases totalling NZ$236 million at the 30 April 2017 cut-off date, according to a preliminary media release from Fitch. The lease receivables are backed by a mix of passenger vehicles as well as light and heavy commercial vehicles. Operating leases comprise 93.8 per cent of the portfolio and finance leases 6.2 per cent. The top-rated tranche of Class A notes, AAA(EXP)sf, is expected to raise $NZ130 million.