The US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has issued a press release announcing their formal approval of covered bonds:
On April 23, 2008, the FDIC published an Interim Final Covered Bond Policy Statement and requested public comment. The FDIC received approximately 130 comment letters, including comments from national banks, federal home loan banks, industry groups, and individuals. Most commenters supported the FDIC’s adoption of the Policy Statement to clarify how the FDIC would treat covered bonds in the case of a conservatorship or receivership and, thereby, facilitate the development of the U.S. covered bond market. After reviewing the comments, FDIC staff recommended Board approval of the final Policy Statement.
The full statement reviews the comment letters. It’s a very different release altogether from the terse OSFI statement.
[…] Covered bonds were mentioned in a speech Trichet delivered in Nice: Another aspect I would underline in this context relates to the issuance of covered bonds. Indeed, the performance of covered bonds proved up to now to be relatively resilient to the financial market correction compared to asset-backed securities. Covered bonds are already the most important privately issued bond segment in Europe’s capital markets with over EUR 2 trillion outstanding at the end of 2007. From a financial stability perspective, they have a number of attractive features, not least the fact that the credit risk stays with the originator, which strengthens the incentives for prudent risk management; generally they are also more transparently accounted for in banks’ published accounts than securitisation transactions. […]