Bridget Boulle reporting
We've just heard that the European Investment Bank (EIB) is making a further EUR500 million ($690m) tap of its Climate Awareness Bond that matures in November 2019. The bond, which was first issued in July 2013, has now been tapped 5 times putting it EUR2 billion outstanding! The lead underwriters for this tap were: Credit Agricole, Citi, Morgan Stanley and RBC.
The word is that they were initially going for EUR250m but it closed at EUR500m.
The webinar today - Tues 18 Feb @1pm EST/6pm GMT - is hosted by "AsYouSow.org".
Three of us will be talking:
If you're interested, join at Green Bonds: Trailblazing Issuers Accelerating the Low Carbon Economy webinar.
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We've heard that EIB has just done a SEK900m tap, taking the amount of this 2019 maturing bond to SEK3bn ($466m) in total. Buyers were Swedish institutional investors. No further details yet, except that SEB was the underwriter.
(BTW, in my earlier email about the NIB EUR40m bond I mistakenly noted SEB as the underwriter - an error - I meant to say Credit Agricole CIB. This EIB SEK bond is the SEB one.)
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Anne Simpson of CalPRS, at last month's UN Investor Summit on Climate Risk, warning that catastrophic climate change will be a disaster for investors:
The Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) this week issued a 5 year, EUR40 million ($55m), floating rate note, part of their ongoing "Environmental Bond" programme. This is the fifth bond they've issued under this program, with just under $500m worth of NIB Environmental Bonds currently outstanding.
By Bridget Boulle, Climate Bonds Initiative. Prepared for Responsible-Investor.com
2013 has been a big year for green and climate bonds - it was the year that everyone started talking about them. It was the year that totals outstanding of explicitly green “labelled” bonds doubled, the issuer list diversified and investors in both the mainstream and ESG/SRI markets became interested. Here is short overview of developments.
PARIS - Dr Michael Molitor, Kristian Brüning and Dr Alex Rau today join the Climate Bonds team to support a newly convened supervisory Climate Science Advisory Committee, supervising eligibility criteria for the Climate Bond Standards.
A Climate Science Reference Framework will anchor the Climate Bonds Taxonomy and Climate Bond Standards to projections of needed emission reductions and adaptation measures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and internationally respected climate science research centres.
PARIS - Climate Bonds today announced a timetable for the release of eligibility criteria under the Climate Bond Standards and Certification Scheme. Eligibility criteria are used to determine what assets can be linked to Green Bonds and Climate Bonds.
Criteria are drafted by domain expert committees drawn up from internationally recognized agencies. Once drafted, criteria are subject to public consultation periods before final approval by the Climate Bond Standards Advisory Board*. Criteria are then published online as a public resource.
The European Commission’s Directorate-General of Climate Action has commissioned a project to look at what Europe’s role should be in "shifting private finance towards climate-friendly Investments" – both within the EU and internationally.
As their brief says:
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.
Media release
London 23 January 2014 - The Climate Bonds Initiative today released its Green Climate Bonds Underwriters League Table for 2013.
Some $10 billion of Green Climate Bonds were issued in 2013, the biggest year yet, and one which saw new issuers, investors and underwriters join the market.
