By Lewis McLellan
04 May 2021
‘Look at the issuer as a whole’ is the mantra of the corporate and supranational green bond markets, and rightly so. But we need to apply the same approach to sovereigns.
The fact is that sovereign green bonds, although they have been important for developing standards, are too limited. Despite tens of billions of dollars of them being issued each year, they make up a minute part of countries’ balance sheets and give little indication of the overall impact of how countries spend their money.
Sustainability linked bonds are better than use of proceeds bonds in this respect, in that they assess a country’s overall performance. It takes a brave treasury department to give itself such a clear line for success and failure on sustainability. But even if every country that has issued green bonds were to issue sustainability linked bonds, this would still only be a handful of instruments.
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ESG regulations in Europe map a clear path for the US
Europe has led the way in the exploding market for socially responsible investing.
April 16, 2021 2 MINS
Financial advisers wondering where U.S. regulators might be headed with all their ESG-related rule discussions over the past couple of months should glance across the pond as a guide and look at what their European counterparts have just begun to encounter.
Over the last several months, European regulators have put into place rules aimed at boosting the transparency and accountability of investments that claim environmental, social and governance goals or characteristics.
As part of meeting its climate change commitments by 2030, the European Union is creating taxonomy rules to create a common language in this sector known for its alphabet soup of terms.
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The SFDR – get it right from the start
Published 2 days ago
Kavitha Ramachandran, Head of Business Development and Client Management (Continental Europe), based in Luxembourg, unpacks the current and future status of the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), stressing the need for investment managers to follow a partnership approach to interpret and implement the complexities of the regulations.
Driven by European Union regulatory change for financing sustainable growth and reorienting capital flows towards sustainable growth in the financial services sector, the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) – promulgated in 2019 – is a bold step in the right direction to manage financial risk and improve transparency in line with ESG trends.