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IFR Green Bonds Roundtable 2016

IFR’s second annual Green Bond Roundtable, took place in December in the shadow of COP 21. The enormous engagement from politicians, business as well as civil society organisations and the general population at and around that meeting reflected an up-swell of support for the environmental and climate-change agenda. This was reflected, of course, in significant monetary commitments in support of the 2oC cap.

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IFR Green Bonds Roundtable 2016: Participants

Joop Hessels ABN AMRO Joop Hessels’ background is in FIG bond origination. Since 2014, he has been heading the green bond department with debt capital markets at ABN AMRO focusing on sustainable finance bond and loans. He is advising a number of corporate and financial issuers with the setup of their future green bond frameworks. Justin Eeles Affirmative Asset Management Justin Eeles is head of portfolio management at Affirmative Asset Management, and lead portfolio manager for the world’s first green bond fund. He in has 27 years...

IFR Green Bonds Roundtable 2016: Part 1

IFR: Welcome to IFR’s second annual Green Bond Roundtable. Once again, green bonds have been one of the biggest talking points in the debt capital markets. This discussion is taking place, of course, in the shadow of COP21. Ulrik: can you summarise the outputs from COP21 as they pertain to financing the de-carbonisation agenda? Ulrik Ross, HSBC: When you look at COP21, there is huge engagement from the political side, the business side, NGOs and from the general population. We didn’t see that in Copenhagen in 2009, so clearly we have come a...

IFR Green Bonds Roundtable 2016: Part 2

IFR: Very fair points, Ulrik, but that will take time, as you suggested. But in the realm of funding Realpolitik in a volatile 2016, Mirko, where does the green bond agenda go? Mirko Gerhold, Commerzbank: Through experience, volatile markets have never been supportive of new product developments. From that perspective, volatility is not ideal for the further development of the green bond market. From a credit perspective, we have been seeing a lot of activity from SSA issuers and less from lower-rated and in particular non-financial corporate...

IFR Green Bonds Roundtable 2016: Part 3

IFR: To what extent do the Green Bond Principles get close to what Aldo’s talking about? Ulrik Ross, HSBC: We are talking here about some very important elements: the next iterations of green bonds. It ultimately comes down to how you define what is green and what is not. You have a labelled and an unlabelled green bond market but where do you draw the line? It is up to the markets to decide. We don’t need anybody to regulate if investors should buy labelled or unlabelled green bonds. On the labelled side you can clearly come up with good...