Winner: Santander

Santander has won the Issuer of the Year category in this year’s SCI Capital Relief Trades Awards. Such recognition further illustrates the bank’s leading and predominant position in the CRT market.

Despite a volatile and challenging wider macro environment, the group successfully issued a total of 15 capital relief securitisations in the 12 months to September 2023. All transactions have been structured, arranged and placed by Santander CIB.

One particular area of growth for Santander during the period has been the arranging of SRT transactions for third-party banks, utilising its significant experience to help and support new issuers in the market. During the last 12 months, Santander has worked on five mandates for third-party issuers, across multiple jurisdictions and asset classes, as well as different transaction structures.

Furthermore, last year’s record activity was further accompanied by various innovative transactions and asset classes, including Santander’s first and second synthetic residential mortgage SRT transactions, including both unfunded public and private investors (Project Aracataca and Fortaleza respectively).

Project Aracataca was the inaugural synthetic unfunded RMBS securitisation issued by Banco Santander S.A. and the first-ever synthetic RMBS securitisation launched in Spain. The transaction references a €1.6bn pool (net of risk retention) of Spanish prime residential mortgages granted to natural persons and originated by Banco Santander in Spain. In terms of execution, the lower mezzanine tranche was initially sold to (re)insurers.

Santander also closed its first pan-European CRE portfolio (Project Gomber) and pro-rata amortisation structure in the UK, and first issuance from the Motor programme, to combine both secured conditional sale and unsecured fixed sum loans (Motor 2022-1). The bank was additionally prominent in the project finance sector, acting as arranger on Project Boreas and Project Bocarte (Banco Santander).

Honourable mention: Barclays
Barclays completed nine first-loss transactions with a notional face-value of US$1.4bn and an aggregate reference portfolio worth US$17bn during the awards period under its Colonnade programme. Notably, the bank also executed its first unfunded SRTs, closing nine mezzanine deals with insurers for US$155m notional. The portfolios comprised a mix of corporate, SME and commercial real estate loans.

For the full list of winners and honourable mentions in this year’s SCI Capital Relief Trades Awards, click here.