CBA comes clean on conduits

Commonwealth Bank yesterday followed the lead of ANZ and National banks and provided some guidance on the extent to which it was now providing balance sheet funding to asset-backed entities.

In a media release the bank said that it had drawn down $1.3 billion out of $2.5 billion in standby liquidity facilities for two CBA-sponsored conduits, Prime Investment Entity and Shield.

The bank said funding lines of $1.5 billion to "a variety of other conduits that have either highly rated prime RMBS and CMBS securities or other assets including receivables" was drawn down to $50m. CBA said none of these had exposure to sub-prime loans.

The bank said in the statement that, "from a capital adequacy perspective, should all of the group's own facilities be drawn down, the impact on its tier one capital would be approximately seven basis points."