Austria: Schoenherr advises Managers on issue of EUR 1.5bln Mortgage Pfandbriefe by Erste Group

The notes (Mortgage Pfandbriefe, Hypothekenpfandbriefe) were successfully issued under Austrian law on 12 January 2022 under Erste Group's Covered Bonds Programme and placed with professional clients and eligible counterparties. The notes have a term of six and a half and fifteen years, respectively, have a denomination of EUR 100,000 each and are rated Aaa by Moody's. They are admitted to the Official Market (Amtlicher Handel) of the Vienna Stock Exchange.

The banking consortium comprised Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Danske Bank A/S, DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale, DZ BANK AG Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank, Frankfurt am Main, Erste Group Bank AG, ING Bank N.V., Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen Girozentrale and UniCredit acting as the Joint Lead Managers in connection with the placement of the notes as well as HYPO NOE Landesbank für Niederösterreich und Wien AG as co-lead manager.

"We are pleased that the Managers relied on our legal expertise for the issuance of EUR 1.5bln Mortgage Pfandbriefe by Erste Group. We thank the Managers and the issuer for placing their trust in us. Congratulations to the issuer and all parties involved in the successful completion of the transaction", said partner and co-head of Schoenherr's capital markets practice Christoph Moser.

The Schoenherr team consisted of Christoph Moser (lead partner), Angelika Fischer (associate) and Hubertus Forsthuber.

Wolf Theiss Rechtsanwälte GmbH & Co KG (Claus Schneider, Nikolaus Dinhof-Renezeder and Dominik Thill) advised Erste Group Bank AG as issuer's counsel.