Liberty prices RMBS, breaks free via its bonds
Liberty Financial yesterday priced a A$500 million residential mortgage backed securitisation, after launching earlier in the week. This transaction, the Liberty Series 2015-1 RMBS issue, is the thirty-first public term securitisation in Australia from the non-bank lender.The top two tranches rated by Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's (the Aaa/AAA Notes only). Deutsche Bank was the sole arranger and joint lead manager, along with Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank.The transaction attracted strong interest from investors across all offered tranches, which led to the deal being well oversubscribed, according to a company statement from Liberty. More details from Liberty: The A$370.0 million Class A1 notes, to be rated Aaa(sf)/AAA(sf) by Moody's and S&P, have a weighted average life of about 2.2 years, and priced at a margin of 105 basis points over one month BBSW. The A$62.0 million Class A2 notes, to be rated Aaa(sf)/AAA(sf) with a weighted average life of about 2.2 years, priced at a margin of 135 basis points over one month BBSW.The pricing of the Class B, C, D, E and F notes - to be rated by Moody's alone - was not disclosed (Ratings: Aa2(sf), A2(sf), Baa2(sf), Ba2(sf) and B2(sf) ).It comes a couple of weeks after settlement on a $100 million senior debt issue. Liberty is moving away from being purely a securitisation-funded operation.Peter Riedel, chief financial officer at Liberty, said this was an example of how Liberty was moving to diversify its funding sources, after being rated BBB- by S&P earlier this year.