Barclays

From wind energy to improving inadequate education systems, there is no lack of need for SRI financing in Latin America. LatAm may be unlikely to see the rapid emergence of a mainstream green bond market, but there is no shortage of invention or hard work across the region to ensure it is not left behind. Oliver West reports

The year 2015 has seen important progress in the field of green bond investment in Asia, with the emergence of two big new markets — China and India. For its Tokyo roundtable, GlobalCapital invited a panel of issuers, investors, analysts and bankers to discuss the trends in the sector and the potential for development as new markets open up for the asset class across the region.

Corporate and FIG green bonds had a breakthrough year in 2014 and there have been several deals already this year. But with banks facing a flood of new regulations and the cost of reporting putting some corporations off the idea of printing green bonds, the two sectors face challenges not endured by SSA issuers. There are, however, still plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future of corporate and FIG green bonds. GlobalCapital brought together corporate and FIG funding officials, bankers and green bond experts London for a roundtable discussion on how 2015 has fared — and what 2016 will bring.

As the green bond market grows and becomes more sophisticated, so do the demands from investors for better verification and reporting standards. But with a proliferation of approaches and third party opinion providers, there are calls for standardisation — and even the potential for pricing differentials developing among bonds with different qualities of reporting. Craig McGlashan reports.

GlobalCapital's European SRI roundtable for 2015 brought together issuers, investors and bankers to discuss how to tackle the capital markets challenges of sustainable and responsible investment.

Larsen & Toubro Infotech, the information technology services unit of Indian conglomerate Larsen & Toubro, plans to raise $300m from an IPO of only secondary shares.

British operator of cloud services Interoute Communications’ €590m secured notes braved a rough primary high yield market on September 25 and recovered this week from an initial hit in the secondary.

Responsible investing sounds clear enough, but there is a bewildering range of approaches. You can build up green portfolios or search for value across all your assets. Yet there is no doubt: responsible investing is on the march. Jon Hay reports.

A German agency is set to tackle the short end of the euro curve, as a fall in rates across the curve limits issuers’ options in the currency.

A European sovereign will sell a short dated dollar benchmark on Tuesday, but a weak market backdrop and tight swap spreads are likely to hold other issuers back from bringing deals in the currency.

Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries has opened its $1.47bn dual-currency loan into general syndication, with four participation levels available to lenders.

A violent reaction to German car company Volkswagen’s admission that it had used defeat device software in some of its diesel vehicles over a six year period tracing back to 2009 gripped capital markets this week.