The ECB has already started “tapering” less corporate purchases than other programmes since April 2017, the month which saw the reduction from €80bn to €60bn of monthly purchases.
Recently, President Draghi was not the only member of the ECB Governing Council noting that in 2018 the “ECB will continue buying sizeable quantities of corporate bonds in the programme”. “Sizeable” gives no indication as to a specific number for 2018 but surely points to an increase in CSPP purchases in percentage terms on the overall programme and relative to the public sector programme. In this paper, we address the ECB CSPP from three different angles: its structural impact on the EUR corporate bond market, the state of the art of the programme and developments in the programme in 2018 and beyond, together with the rationale behind our expected scenario.
