New issuance in the European securitization market for the last three quarters of 2006 increased 54.1% versus the same period in 2005, said a report by the European Securitization Forum released today.
New securitizations that came to market reached 283 billion compared to last year's 196.2 billion. Meanwhile, new issuance is on target to reach 350 billion for the whole year, the ESF added. This growth was fueled by RMBS issuance that rose 70% to 150.6 billion. This sharp increase has resulted in RMBS accounting for 53.2% of the European securitization market.
Meanwhile, the CMBS market volume is increasing by leaps and bounds too. Issuance in this sector is set to be more than 50 billion at the end of the year. This tremendous growth happened during the last three quarters. During this time period, issuance in CMBS jumped 36.7%.
In other asset classes, the ESF said that total auto ABS that came to market in these three quarters almost tripled -- jumping to 4.87 billion.
Geographically speaking, the United Kingdom had the lion's share of issuance, according to the ESF. U.K. issuance in the first three quarters of 2006 made up 54.4% of total new issuance -- amounting to a whopping 154 billion.
