News

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank welcomed a record number of investors into the orderbook of its latest tier-two transaction. Most of these accounts were already active in the bank’s wider funding programme but have only now taken the decision to step down the capital structure to tier-two level.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia took the revival in bank securitisation issuance to a new level just before the end of the third quarter, doubling the size of the residential mortgage-backed securities deal it priced on 26 October and further tightening senior pricing. The issuer confirms that it expects securitisation to be a component of its wholesale funding mix on an ongoing basis.

Australia’s energy transition has accelerated. But it is not a straight-line journey to net zero and signs are that each progressive step brings new challenges. With the low-hanging fruit now mostly picked, martialling investment capital for equally vital future progress will be no easy task.

Each year, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and KangaNews survey Australian fixed-income asset managers to get an update on the lay of the land in local sustainable capital markets, then invite investors to add qualitative thoughts to the data at a roundtable discussion. The 2023 outcome paints a picture of a market that continues to mature but still has a number of hurdles to clear.

The nature crisis may be less widely discussed than the climate crisis but – as well as being a tragedy on its own terms – it represents no less of a threat to human wellbeing. Sustainable finance has the chance to learn from decades of gradually evolving expertise in the climate space to deliver faster action on biodiversity, according to participants at an ANZ-KangaNews roundtable that took place in Sydney in September. But the window to act will not stay open forever.

After years of lagging uptake in other global economies, uptake of electric vehicles in Australia is finally starting to accelerate. Clean Energy Finance Corporation and KangaNews hosted institutional participants in the sector at a September roundtable in Sydney, to discuss the detail on infrastructure and financing behind the headline uptake numbers.

Social factors have tended to be the black sheep of the sustainable finance family: harder to measure than emissions and frequently less prioritised than the need to respond to the existential threat of climate change. Participants at a KangaNews-Westpac Institutional Bank roundtable, which took place in Sydney in September, discussed moves to improve the measurability of social impact, the sector’s challenges and why the link between the pillars of environmental, social and governance (ESG) might make the term redundant.

The new governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Michele Bullock, has used her first public speech in the role to affirm its laser focus on inflation – noting that the other aspects of the bank’s mandate may be subordinate to, or have complementary outcomes with, inflation direction. Analaysts and markets largely view the central bank’s November cash rate decision as a line-ball call with the 25 October CPI print for Q3 likely to be a key input.

The ‘sleeper’ sustainability-linked loan has been mooted as a potential answer for businesses whose financing requirements do not conveniently line up with their sustainability target setting. By converting a substantial bank facility to sustainability-linked format, student accommodation provider Scape has demonstrated that the sleeper can awake.

A primarily domestic bid was enough to deliver a roughly two-times oversubscription to Queensland Treasury Corporation’s return to syndicated issuance. With limited new-issuance windows before year end, the state treasury corporation brought its latest deal in close proximity to other government-sector bookbuilds but says the deal cluster supported investor confidence rather than diluting liquidity.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s latest tier-two transaction was the tightest pricing achieved for a security of its type in the domestic market since April 2022. The borrower says it sought to take advantage of a promising market window and a relative dearth of new tier-two supply in recent weeks.

Woolworths was greeted by an almost four-times oversubscription in its return to the Australian dollar market, demonstrating once again the reception afforded to high-quality domestic corporate names. The transaction also experienced a significant margin compression, leading deal sources to comment on the strength of the Woolworths credit and the good timing of its execution.