First new issuer of 2014! ExportDevCanada issues USD300m AAA green bond - sold out in 15 mins! / Reminder: Climate Bonds seminar in Paris on Tues. 120 people coming, but we still have seats

OTTAWA - Export Development Canada (EDC) today issued it's first green bond. They received $300 million of orders within 15 minutes of opening the books, with $500 million of orders on the books before they stopped. Brilliant result!

 

EDC is Canada's export credit agency; the USD300 million bond is for "loans that will preserve, protect or remediate air, water or soil, or help mitigate climate change". Third party review was by CICERO, at the University of Oslo in Norway.

EDC has made a strong commitment to ongoing reporting; you can see the start of that on the US Securities and Exchange Commission's web page for the bond. They also say there will be more EDC green bonds. This will help grow liquidity.

Some examples of EDC loans financed by the bond:

 

Company/Project Sector Location
IMPSA (Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona) Renewable Energy Argentina
Cascades Inc. Recycling and Recovery US
Noble Environmental Power 2008 Hold Co LLC Renewable Energy US
GoldLinQ Consortium Public Ground Transport Australia
Angel Trains Limited Public Ground Transport UK

SEB and JP Morgan are the joint managers, with the deal modelled on the pioneering World Bank Green Bonds.

 

Kudos to my friend Ed Waitzer in Toronto who, according to EDC staff, first suggested a green bond to EDC.

If, like Ed, you know folks in institutions that could be an issue, do raise it with them ? We need lots of issuance this year to build liquidity and bring in the bigger investors.

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Join us in Paris next Tuesday afternoon, 28 Jan: we still have a few seats left for our Sustainable Bonds seminar with KeplerCheuvreux and the 2° Investing Initiative. Feel free to ask a friend.

Speakers include :

  • Dominique Dron, Head of France's Interministerial Mission for Financing the Ecological Transition
  • Florian Sommer, Senior Strategist, Sustainability, Union Investment & Archie Beeching, PRI
  • Antongiulio Marin, Policy Officer at DG Climate, European Commission
  • Tanguy Claquin, Credit Agricole CIB
  • James Ranaivoson , European Investment Bank & Claude Nahon, EDF
  • Julia Hoggett, MD, Head of Green Debt Capital Markets EMEA, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
  • Sean Kidney, The Climate Bond Initiative (yes, me)
  •  

Details at https://research.keplercheuvreux.com/ESG/SUSTAINABLE_BOND/