Structured products volume $1.43 billion for week of Feb. 17; BofA Merrill Lynch tops bookrunners

By Sheri Kasprzak

New York, Feb. 27 - Volume for structured products reached $1.43 billion in 168 deals for the week of Feb. 17, a massive 103.82% increase over the previous week, according to Prospect News data. Comparatively, during the week of Feb. 10, there were 158 deals totaling $703 million.

Excluding exchange-traded notes, volume topped $1.16 billion in 155 deals, compared to $541 million in 146 deals in the week of Feb. 10, an increase of 113.48%.

Smaller deals made up the majority of the action, with 31 offerings totaling $10 million or more, compared to 15 deals the week before. There were 17 deals that topped $20 million, compared to just four the week before, and only three deals larger than $50 million, with none of that size the previous week.

Top bookrunner

Moving to the leading bookrunners, BofA Merrill Lynch took the top spot once again. BofA was the bookrunner for $730 million of structured products, excluding ETNs, for a total of 63.22% of all structured products priced during the week of Feb. 17. BofA also took the top spot the week of Feb. 10, with $17 million in deals.

Goldman Sachs & Co. was the number-two bookrunner for the week of Feb. 17, selling $87 million of structured products excluding ETNs, making up 7.51% of the market, up 11.84% from the week of Feb. 10.

UBS AG was the bookrunner for $67 million of structured products excluding ETNs during the week of Feb. 17, down 7.47% from the week of Feb. 10.

Equities top underliers

Equities were the top underlier for the week of Feb. 17, with $1.02 billion in deals linked to equities, comprising 88.61% of the deals with 129 priced. The week of Feb. 10, there were also 129 notes linked to equities, but just $413 million of equity-linked products priced, marking an increase of 147.8% week over week.

Synthetics were the second-largest underlier, with $137 million of bonds linked to synthetics, making up just 11.89% of offerings during the week of Feb. 17, down 7.54% from the week of Feb. 10 when $148 million of offerings were linked to synthetics.

Synthetic ETFs rounded out the top three underliers, with $55 million of deals linked to synthetic ETFs, an increase of 242.83% from the week of Feb. 10 when $16 million of deals were linked to synthetic ETFs.

Reverse convertibles lead

Heading up the structures, leveraged return notes took the lead with $469 million of leveraged return notes priced during the week of Feb. 17, making up 40.63% of offerings, up sharply from the week of Feb. 10 when just $35 million of leveraged return notes were priced.

$2.91 billion priced in month

Looking to month-to-date numbers, $2.91 billion of structured products offerings were priced in 484 deals from Feb. 1 to Feb. 23. This is a 0.46% increase from the previous month, in which $2.9 billion of structured products offerings were priced in 397 deals.

During the same period in February 2012, there were $3.19 billion of structured products offerings priced in 542, a decline of 8.78%.

Excluding ETNs, there were $2.29 billion in offerings priced in 438 deals compared with $1.96 billion priced for the same period in January, an increase of 16.89% month over month.

Year to date, there have been $7.52 billion of new structured products offerings priced in 1,226 deals, up 11.6% for the same period in 2012.

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