Liberty prices an oversubscribed SME securitisation issue
Liberty Financial has priced the A$400 million securitisation of its small ticket commercial loans, the day after the transaction was launched. This is Liberty's thirty-seventh public term securitisation.The Liberty Series 2016-1 SME transaction is also the financial services firm's fifth and largest issue of securities to be backed by a portfolio of small-to-medium enterprise loans, secured by first registered mortgages over commercial or residential properties, originated by Liberty.The pool of SME mortgages has a weighted average loan-to-value ratio of 66 per cent and is seasoned at approximately six months.The company said after the books had closed that "the transaction attracted strong interest from investors across all offered tranches which led to the deal being more than two times oversubscribed."There are eight tranches, ranging from the A$260.0 million Class A1 notes, to be rated AAA(sf), to the unrated A$12.8 million seller notes. The Class A1 tranche is a "super-senior tranche" which benefits from almost twice the subordination required to achieve a AAA-rating from S&P and the Class A2 tranche benefits from one and one-third times the subordination required to achieve a AAA-rating from S&P.The Class A1 notes have a weighted average life of about 1.8 years, and were priced at a margin of 180 basis points over one month BBSW, as had previously been indicated in Banking Day on Tuesday.Likewise, the Class A2 Notes, with a weighted average life of about 1.8 years, also to be rated AAA (sf) by S&P, were priced at a margin of 240 basis points over one month BBSW.The Liberty Series 2016-1 SME transaction will settle on 23 September 2016. Westpac Banking Corporation is the Arranger and joint lead manager with Credit Suisse.