News
Scoring and pricing sovereign borrowers on the basis of environmental, social and governance performance could have a greater impact on global sustainability than anything else capital markets can hope to achieve. But sovereign debt is the least developed major global asset class when it comes to integrating sustainability factors.
The Australian Sustainable Finance Institute has a new board, a more permanent role and a freshly minted executive officer, Kristy Graham. The institute’s goals have not changed: to drive realignment of the Australian financial services system so more money flows to support sustainability. Graham updates KangaNews Sustainable Finance on developments including taxonomy progress and work with international peers.
The importance of decarbonisation to the Australian economy is now almost universally accepted. The remaining questions surround whether it can be achieved quickly enough and the scale of costs and benefits deriving from the pace at which transition is achieved. National Australia Bank has published detailed research on the size of the task at hand and is showing how it feeds down to decisions taken with major customers.
Clean Energy Finance Corporation has committed more than A$10 billion of investment in support of Australia’s net zero transition, catalysing about A$37 billion in private capital investment in the clean-energy economy in the process. As the green bank marks its first decade of investment, its Sydney-based head of debt markets, Richard Lovell, highlights lessons learned and future steps.
In late September, ANZ, KangaNews Sustainable Finance and Pollination Group brought together prominent sustainability investors and corporate issuers to discuss emerging challenges in sustainable finance and how to solve them. Reporting standards, greenwashing risk, natural capital and biodiversity, and the danger of being overwhelmed as more areas are added to the sustainability mix top the list of challenging issues.
As momentum in sustainable finance has grown over recent years, driven by increasing pressure from climate change and sustainable development as well as a vast increase in capital flows into sustainable investments, greenwashing has become more nuanced and more challenging for issuers to navigate.
Offshore bank Kangaroo issuance highlighted the week ending 21 October in the Australian primary market, with Coöperatieve Rabobank and Bank of Nova Scotia pricing transactions and Shinhan Bank and KEB Hana Bank mandating social bonds. In New Zealand, Air New Zealand priced a A$100 million (US$56.6 million) retail offer.
