Stella Saris Chow ANZ Stella Saris Chow is currently the head of sustainable finance, international for Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, with responsibility across Asia, Europe and the US. Prior to this, she was an energy and infrastructure coverage banker in Asia and has spent 15 years in project finance. Saris Chow has 20 years’ banking experience and has held structured finance and industry coverage roles in Asia, the UK and Australia. Saris Chow is co-chair of the Asia Pacific

IFR Asia: Let us start things with an overview of ESG bond issuance trends across Asia-Pacific. Sarah Ng, ANZ: The market has matured to some extent. We’re all familiar with the terms ‘sustainable financing’ and ‘ESG’ and all these wonderful acronyms by now. From a granularity perspective, we are moving forward from green being the dominating colour into other social and sustainability formats. We are seeing carbon neutrality bonds, biodiversity bonds, even blue bon

LSEG LPC: Is there a possibility for a common taxonomy standard for Asia Pacific as a whole, or is it too much of a challenge? Stella Saris Chow, ANZ: Taxonomies have been drafted with interoperability and alignment in mind, which helps bankers a lot. But I don’t think a common taxonomy regime across Asia Pacific is a requirement. I do see the need for regionalisation, tied to each countries’ underlying economies and goals. Taking Australia as an example, you see a focus on green min

Ian Hay Credit Guarantee and Investment Facility Ian Hay is the head of institutional risk at Credit Guarantee and Investment Facility supervising water, wastewater and contaminated land projects across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. He worked for HSBC corporate banking for 10 years in Europe and the Middle East, followed by nine years as head of sustainability risk in Asia. Hay joined CGIF in 2021 responsible for leading the safeguards (sustainability) and integrity teams assessing clients