Federal Treasury notes ("Schaetze")

Profile

Maturity: 2 years

Income: fixed annual interest payment

Redemption: at par value

Price risk: low

Issuer risk: very low

With a maturity of two years, Federal Treasury notes (Schaetze) are the capital market instruments of the federal government as issuer with the shortest original maturity. After federal bonds, they are among the most important financing instruments of the federal government.

Schaetze as a proportion of currently tradeable Government debt

Primary market

Besides Bunds and Bobls, Schaetze are one of the Federal Government's most important funding tools. As there are four new issues per year, there are eight Schaetze outstanding at any one time.

As in previous years, four new issues will be implemented in 2022 in February, May, August and November. In addition to the 4 new issues of € 6 bn each, there will be 8 reopenings of € 5 or € 5.5 bn, adding up to a total volume of € 43 bn.

In the 2022 annual issuance calendar, € 67 bn or around 16 % of the annual auction volume is therefore expected to be accounted for by federal treasury notes, € 3 bn more than in 2021.

Schaetze as a proportion of total issuance volume in 2022

In contrast to the issuance volumes of nominal and money market securities which already had been fixed within the issuance calendar for the whole calendar year, the issuance amount of the inflation-linked securities is specified only right before issuance. So in this chart their share increases over the course of the year with each new issuance of an inflation-linked security whereby the shares of the other Federal securites decrease slightly. Similarly, the issuance volumes from syndicates and the increases of conventional twins of Green Federal securities into the Federal Government's own holdings are only included on the date of issuance. They lift the issuance volume - but not the auction volume.

Secondary market

Schaetze are among the most liquid securities traded on the secondary market for Federal securities. The general tendency on the primary market is to have eight outstanding Schaetze at any one time. At year-end 2021, there was an outstanding volume of € 116 bn corresponding to more than 7 % of the total Federal securities volume. This exceeds in absolute but not in relative terms previous year's level of € 107.5 bn.

The at year-end 2021 volumes of the individual securities ranged from € 10 to 16 bn each.
Their share of the total trading volume of the reporting banks in the Bund Issues Auction Group fell by two percentage points to around 10 % in 2021 compared to the previous year. The absolute level of trading volume also fell from € 504 bn in 2020 to € 464 bn in 2021.

Currently tradeable Federal Treasury notes

The terms of issue for Federal Treasury notes are available within the security master data after clicking on the corresponding ISIN.