Daiwa Securities

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.

So far green bonds have dominated the still young ESG capital markets. But in the last 12 months a pair of issuers have brought bonds based on social themes in benchmark size. Tessa Wilkie reports on how we are about to see a lot more of them.

European banks have been the mainstay of the Samurai market over the last 12 months, and the market has repaid them with loyalty. When European markets were shut during the Greek crisis, Japan stayed open for familiar names, rewarding those who have made the effort to build relationships and a track record. Here, eight issuers and two banks describe their experience.

Municipality Finance

Bankers and funding officials this week might have been tempted to strap on a blindfold at points during the execution of the only dollar benchmark in a fortnight.

Japanese bank Daiwa has expanded its LatAm DCM team with the hire of skydiving instructor Marcelo Bombarelli.

Daiwa Capital Markets has hired a former head of sterling credit trading from Lloyds in a bid to increase the Japanese group’s presence in the currency.

Municipality Finance brought the first dollar benchmark since a big sell-off in Chinese equities on August 24 sparked volatility in global equity and credit markets, roiling issuance conditions for public sector borrowers in dollars.

Myanmar has stepped up its efforts to establish the country’s first modern stock exchange following the release of a series of listing criteria last week. The high standard of the requirements means only a handful of companies will be eligible to list, but bigger issues will in any case need to be addressed before the Yangon Stock Exchange (YSX) can launch, writes Rev Hui.

Korea EximBank launched a dual tranche 2021 Kangaroo bond on Wednesday, its first deal in the format this year.