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) have the shortest maturity of any capital market instruments issued by 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 the previous years, four new issues of Schaetze will be carried out in 2021 – in February, May, August and November. After an initial issue with a volume of € 6 bn, the new issues reach a final volume of € 16 bn after two reopenings of € 5 bn in the following months, each. According to current planing the new issue in November will have just one reopening of € 4 bn before year-end, reaching € 10 bn for the time being. In addition, the Schatz initially issued in November 2020 will be re-opened for a last time in January 2021 by € 6 bn in order to achieve a final volume of € 14 bn.

This means that in the 2021 auction calendar currently € 64 bn will be raised via Schaetze, € 8 bn more than in the previous year.

Schaetze as a proportion of total issuance volume in 2021

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 German Government securities. The general tendency on the primary market is to have eight outstanding Schaetze at any one time. At year-end 2020, there was an outstanding volume of € 107.5 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 € 98 bn and 9 %.
At year-end 2020 the tradable volumes of each single security (without the November Schatz whose targeted final volume wasn't achieved at year-end) amounted to € 13 to 15.5 bn.
Schaetze accounted for around 13 % (€ 528 bn) of the trading volume of German Government securities of the reporting member banks of the Bund Issues Auction Group in 2019. That is almost unchanged versus previous year's share but in absolute numbers less then 2018's € 595 bn.

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.