SSA Issuers Roundtable (September 2024)
The SSA market has been embroiled in different themes this year, from front-loading issuance in an effort to get ahead of possible political and interest rate volatility, to taking its usual place as the crucible of bond market innovation — this year through greater exploration of distributed ledger technology and digital bond issuance, and the latest variations in ESG financing.
We brought together some of the highest profile issuers in the market with representation from the buy-side and investment banks in Frankfurt in mid-September to discuss not just these developments but also what one participant called “the elephant in the room.”
The biggest borrower on the block, if not the blockchain, is the bloc itself: the European Union. Front and centre of much of what goes on in the SSA bond market, participants including the European Commission also debated the latest twist in issuer’s quest to be seen as a sovereign issuer and the growth of Europe’s capital markets.
Roundtable participants
| Marjan Divjak, Director-General, Treasury Directorate, Ministry of Finance, Slovenia |
| Anne Flori, Senior Funding Officer, Council of Europe Development Bank |
| Jörg Graupner, Senior Funding Manager, Treasury, KfW |
| Davide Iacovoni, Director General - Public Debt, Treasury Department, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Italy |
| Bernd Loder, Head of SSA DCM, DZ BANK |
| Siegfried Ruhl, Hors Classe Adviser, Directorate General for Budget, European Commission |
| Jörg Warncke, Head of Rates Developed Markets, Union Investment |
| Jong Woo Nam, Senior Financial Officer, Treasury, World Bank |
| Marco Zimmermann, Global Head of Treasury and Capital Markets, European Investment Bank (EIB) |
| Moderator: Ralph Sinclair, London bureau chief, GlobalCapital |