Hello, happy new year to all and welcome to the first edition of Freshly Squeezed ABS in 2026.

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Despite many of us only just returning to work from the holidays, there is no rest for the wicked in this increasingly robust European ABS market thanks to Vida Bank, who have launched Tower Bridge Funding 2026-1.

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The deal is a £666m mixed BTL/ owner-occupied RMBS. However, just £250m of the total £600m Class A notes are on offer, the rest of that tranche and the remaining capital stack are all retained. The collateral split is 70.57% for BTL and 29.43% for owner occupied.

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Pricing is detailed as “no later than w/c 12^thJanuary”, which suggests there could be room to price this week, depending on how things go.

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Before getting their banking license, Vida Bank, who were previously known as Belmont Green, had a reputation for being one of the first movers in January, and it seems that reputation is being revived after over a year out of the market.

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As we look ahead to what one hopes will be another year of strong ABS volumes,  I often find myself marveling at how a new year always brings with it that weird, illogical optimism we apply collectively and personally.

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Our careers will skyrocket, our sports team will prosper, and in my case I will finally pull myself together to get fit, eat well, reduce my alcohol consumption and quit smoking to be beach-bod ready by Global ABS.

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But while it’s certainly possible that you’ll see me in Barcelona flaunting my six-pack, and more likely still that Arsenal will end their 22-year wait for a Premier League title, things often stay on the path they’ve been on. The fears or problems we had in December don’t just disappear on a wave of “new year, new me” vibes.

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And so, as European ABS primary reopens, I am drawn to conversations of last April.

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Back then, the US “Liberation Day” tariffs were the only thing that managed to make ABS and markets more broadly pause for thought in 2025. And I recall asking some market participants what they made of it all.

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Newspaper headlines swirled around the broader political and economic implications of a return to US protectionism, and the feeling inside ABS was that only outside events could derail it.

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The market paused, and clearly there was some caution all-round. But even in the immediate aftermath, the perceived wisdom was that these geopolitical events would have little short-term effect on a UK mortgage portfolio or a German borrower’s ability to pay their car loan. So, of course, the market restarted pretty swiftly.

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Fast forward to today with Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, President since 2013, now in a New York jail cell, the same questions are being asked.

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And in the same way, when you listen to the radio and read the newspapers, many will be wondering what this all means for the international order. It may trickle down into ABS and see a few issuers take a little longer to come to market this month.

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But pretty quickly, the market will come to the same conclusion it came to in April 2025: Venezuelan and US politics does not in the short-medium term, affect German car loans.

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Perhaps more cynically, as a banker put it back in April, the day these geopolitical things do affect German car loans, we will have far bigger issues to worry about than bond prices.

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So, while I’m busy doing dry January, expect the market to get going pretty quickly.

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ICYMI

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In case you missed it, before the year was out, the last two editions of Freshly Squeezed did a brief review of the year with some interesting graphs and tables. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here.

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To rejig your memory, here is how the arrangers looked in European ABS when all was said and done. The race to catch BNP Paribas in 2026 begins now!

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Let’s hope for another great year in European ABS!                    

Tom

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