Last checked at 
By Aimee Donnellan
LONDON, May 17 (IFR) - Why would a Swiss bank selling whatappears to be a vanilla Tier 2 CoCo bond need 13 lead managers?Distribution? Sound advice from a wide range of industryexperts? Or could it just be a simple case of reciprocity?
The few banks that weren't on the USD1.5bn total loss bondthat priced on Wednesday think the latter.
"It's pretty clear why UBS has done this, and that's to worktheir way onto deals," said one DCM banker.
"They certainly aren't using them as underwriters todistribute bonds, but rather instead are giving other banks ahigh profile on this trade so that UBS can go back to them laterto chase deals."
The Swiss bank, global co-ordinator on the transaction, alsohired Banca IMI, Barclays, BBVA, Credit Agricole CIB, DanskeBank, HSBC, ING, Lloyds, Mizuho, RBS, Santander and UniCredit.
BBVA, some said, could be a return favour, given that UBSwas a bookrunner on the Spanish bank's Additional Tier 1 bondthat was sold two weeks ago.
Similarly, Barclays has been the biggest CoCo issuer in thepast six months and recently received shareholder approval tosell Additional Tier 1, while Lloyds and RBS are tipped to hitthe capital sector with CoCo deals later this year.
In what looks to be another red flag, Mizuho, a virtualunknown in the European bank capital space, has now popped up onthis mandate.
The number of bookrunners has caught the eye of DCM bankerswho have contrasted it with the self-led Tier 2 bond fromDeutsche Bank currently in the market and this week'ssubordinated sterling deal from UK insurer Liverpool Victoria,which featured just two bookrunners - Barclays and HSBC.
A debut deal, the latter could well have justified a largerbookrunner list. UBS, which has already tried and tested thisstructure before, was hardly pushing the boundaries with itsCoCo.
Even BBVA, a Spanish bank which was first to test AT1, onlyhad four bookrunners.
Syndicate desks are now going through the lead manager listwith great interest, with some thinking about potential dealsthat could be up for grabs in the capital, covered and seniorspace.
"They've ticked all the boxes in that practically all of themain European banks are bookrunners. It may not be all aboutdirect reciprocity in primary deals, but some of these banks maybe helping them in other ways."
