League table chicanery in Spain

The practice of underwriting securitisation transactions in order to manipulate the bookrunner league tables has left many banks open to accusations that they pay their way up the rankings. Sarfraz Thind reports on how this practice may be affecting the Spanish market and discovers that the league tables may not always be telling the whole story

Since the liberalisation of the Securitisation Law in 1998, enabling the issuance of securitisation through fund vehicles, the Spanish market has grown to become the third largest securitisation business in Europe after the UK and Italy. Over this period, the size of the Spanish market has increased five-fold. The burgeoning activity has led to foreign banks clamouring to gain distribution mandates from Spanish originators to boost their transaction volumes in the European