July saw the first “labeled” green bond in the Asian market - from Taiwan’s ASE. Great news. But labelled bonds are like the visible part of an iceberg – they make up just 10% of bonds related to climate solutions. The other 90% are in areas like clean energy, low-carbon transport and (unlabelled) green property.
A few days ago we saw an important “unlabelled” bond from India, issued by Greenko Dutch BV (GBV), the international subsidiary of a leading Indian renewable energy producer, Greenko. It was a $550m, 5 year bond with an 8% coupon and notes guaranteed by the parent. The rating from Fitch’s was B.
The bonds was almost three times oversubscribed, according to Deutsche Bank India Corporate Finance Head Amit Bordia allowing the bond to be priced tighter by 50 basis points.
According to India’s Economic Times, this is the largest high-yield bond from a domestic Indian company.
Greenko didn’t label it green, but, given the “pureplay” clean energy nature of the company, we consider it a green corporate bond.
Greenko says it has 611 megawatts of clean energy capacity operating, the majority in wind power, followed by hydro. CEO Anil Chalmalasetty told The Hindu that the proceeds of the bond will be used to refinance the company’s secured, existing local debt and finance ongoing clean energy projects.
Deutsche Bank was the global coordinator. Bookrunners were Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Investec, JPMorgan and Standard Chartered.
The bond will be listed on the Singapore stock exchange.
