Morgan Stanley

Originally a self-regulated sphere in which voluntary principles underpinned activity, ESG debt is attracting increasing regulatory focus — especially in Europe, where the EU’s ambitious Action Plan on Sustainable Finance is creating a demanding new framework around the market. What does this imply for issuers and investors? And are other regions in step with European developments? Clifford Chance and Latham & Watkins clarify the state of play.

Central banks have become integral to the fight against climate change in financial markets. Participants now expect them to wield their immense influence through many avenues of their work — economic analysis, metrics, supervision, investment and even monetary policy.

Although the biggest issuers of all — the US, Japan and China — remain outside the market for now, sovereign ESG debt has gained real momentum in the past 18 months, as a growing number of developed and emerging market issuers have endorsed green, social and sustainable bonds as part of their financing options. As a result, investors are seizing new opportunities to engage on national pandemic recovery and net zero strategies and targets.

With a host of landmark transactions that include the world’s first sustainability-linked loan and the world’s first green digital Schuldschein, Verbund stands out as a pioneering issuer of ESG debt. Most recently, it broke significant new ground by combining normally separate green use of bond proceeds with a sustainability-linked coupon.

In the past two years, environmental, social and governance matters, especially climate change, have gone from a fringe issue in capital markets to — almost — the main issue. Banks, investors, companies and governments have shouldered the responsibility of helping move the economy to net zero emissions in 30 years. That duty has joined the fiduciary obligation to make money for customers and shareholders that have been the markets’ main motivation in the past.

Pivotal players in capital markets through their credit ratings, rating agencies are responding to investors’ increasing focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors by providing ESG ratings too. But how do the two products differ and is there room for both, given ESG’s growing influence on credit risk? Experts from Moody’s ESG Solutions explain their approach.

While the initial focus of sustainable finance efforts was largely on environmental action, social factors have grown increasingly prominent in recent years — underscored by the establishment of the Social Bond Principles in 2017. Subsequently, Covid and racial tensions in the US have each highlighted social disparities that are leading issuers and investors to treat diversity and inclusion as key parameters too.

With sovereign ESG bonds passing a clear inflection point, sustainability-linked bonds seeing notable growth and acceptance, and social bonds catapulted forward by a key borrower — the European Union (EU) — that is also poised to boost the green bonds market with an unprecedented €250bn programme, sustainable debt capital markets are reaching a new peak of activity across the capital structure from every issuer and credit type. So what’s driving the current boom and what will follow it?

Shares in Wise, the UK fintech group, had traded up more than 22% by Friday afternoon compared to the price at which it completed the first ever direct listing by a technology unicorn on the London Stock Exchange on Wednesday. Equity bankers hailed the transaction as an alternative route to going public when the IPO market is difficult but the list of companies that could do such a deal is short, writes Aidan Gregory.

The Republic of Uzbekistan is seeking to capitalise on a successful dual currency bond it sold just months ago, by returning to the bond market to sell a dollar and Uzbek som bond that also includes a sustainable element.

Indian unicorn Zomato, a food delivery service, has set the final terms for its up to Rp98.9bn ($1.32bn) IPO.

LinkDoc Technology, a cancer-focused medical data company, has shelved its US IPO just hours before pricing, as Chinese technology stocks recoil from Beijing’s clampdown on overseas listings.