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Two non- conforming lenders braved difficult market conditions this week, raising pound(s)1.4bn between them. Britannia Building Society returned to its Leek Finance Programme via JP Morgan and RBS, with a pound(s)1bn deal pooling mortgages to prime and near-prime, as well as sub-prime (35%) borrowers. Leek Finance 15, issued across sterling and euro tranches, and including a $310m Reg S triple-A tranche, garnered a broad range of interest from investors, with between 60-70 accounts participating. The leads announced the deal at the start of April, and marketed it through the difficult period when spreads softened across the asset backed market. With market sentiment still soft, the issuer chose to price the triple-A bonds at the wide end of guidance at 14bp over the interbank rates. The mezzanine and junior bonds, however, were multiply oversubscribed, reflecting the strong technical bid for higher-yielding subordinated paper. The double-A rated'M' tranche was twice subscribed, while the single-A and triple-B notes came at 34bp and 63bp respectively, comfortably inside guidance of high 30s and 65bp area. They were four and two times subscribed. The day before, Preferred Mortgages, the non-conforming lender owned by Lehman Brothers, returned with a pound(s)400m offering of mortgage loans, including a large dose of prefunding (pound(s)123m), arranged and underwritten by Lehman. The long dated triple-A tranche was priced at 16bp, 2bp outside Leek, albeit for a two year longer average life. At the single-A and triple-B levels the bonds came 10bp and 7bp outside Leek's equivalent tranches, for similar average lives. One investor attributed the wider spread to the collateral -- Preferred has relatively large proportions of loans to borrowers with at least one county court judgement (36%), and right-to-buy mortgages (31%).