Dude, where's my greenium?

Send us Fan Mail

◆ Do green bonds still offer enough reward for issuers? 
◆ Crédit Agricole's nuclear option 
◆ Banks rush to offer better terms to sub-IG companies 

Two sovereign issuers recently complained that the pricing advantage of doing a green bond rather than a conventional one — the fabled greenium — was not enough to justify the extra costs associated with labelled issuance. That prompted us to look across capital markets to see if we could identify the habitats where this hard to spot creature now dwells and whether it was thriving in any of them, or facing extinction. We reveal our findings this week.

Meanwhile, Crédit Agricole has added a novel feature to its green bond framework — the chance to fund nuclear power projects. The inclusion of nuclear energy in the EU's Taxonomy of Sustainable Activities was not without controversy, so we looked into how the French bank and investors will use this new facility.

We also looked at banks' race to lend to sub-investment grade companies at ever better terms and find out why they are doing so just as rates have rocketed and the credit outlook has deteriorated.