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As we anticipated in our Credit Agricole and BNP notes, the two French banks chose to not call three of their non-step Tier 1s last week. We remain buyers of Agricole’s $7% and €6% Tier 1s for the high carry they offer to the expected call dates of 2017 and 2021. For a shorter-term play, we like RBS’ $5.512% and $L+80bp steps, which should be called by year-end.
Last Thursday,Agricole did not announce the redemption of its $7.375% non-step Tier 1 before the end of the call window. Likewise, BNP did the same last Wednesday, leaving its $6.25% and €4.875% uncalled.We understand that both banks are maximising grandfathering buckets, redeeming only the Tier 1s which have the highest costs (highest coupons) and which ‘fit’ the amount of excess Tier 1 capital they have, as their grandfathering allowance gets amortised. By doing our own grandfathering analysis, we determined in the two notes linked above the expected call dates for BNP and Agricole’s non-steps and are encouraged by the non-calls we saw last week.
We remain buyers of Agricole $7% and €6% Tier 1s, with them both having their last call notice day on September 30 (they’ve been callable quarterly since 2009). Among our top picks at the moment, these bonds offer a generous ZtC of 514bp and 503bp to our expected call dates in 2017 and 2021 and naturally as legacy Tier 1 carry none of the structural problems of new AT1. Note that Agricole’s €6.5% AT1 – with its optional coupons and write-down at 7% group CET1 trigger – trades at a ztc in 2021 of 500bp, so the legacy €6% Tier 1 is actually better value – if we are right about the 2021 call date. We believe that Agricole will call its expensive $1.35 billion 9.75% fixed-fixed non-step next, in December.
For the investor in search of shorter-term trades, we like RBS’ $L+80bp and $5.512% step-up Tier 1s, which both missed their first calls on September 30. In light of RBS’ call behaviour, which we described in our last Tier 1 note, we believe that these two bonds will get called by December 30, giving a YtC of 3.9% and 2.2%, respectively. They will have lost all capital value by then and RBS should be free to call them without having to request permission from the regulator