EIB

Piraeus Bank will privately place a €500m five year covered bond to three supranational agencies in order to support €700m of new lending to small and medium sized companies across Greece.

The much sought after trend for green bonds to outperform conventional paper in secondary trading is now a reality, according to public sector borrowers — but perhaps only for those with enough dots on their green curves to provide a comparison.

A flurry of large trades from the European Investment Bank (EIB), the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the World Bank helped push overall Kangaroo volume so far this year higher than those seen for the whole of 2016.

Investors are packing order books for public sector syndications this week, striving to pick up what may be a dwindling pool of conventional assets. With much of their funding for the year done, borrowers are turning to the green bond market.

Engie, the French energy group, priced its second green bond transaction of 2017 on Tuesday. The triple trancher contained two green clips and took the issuer’s tally to six different green bonds. As issuers start to establish genuine green curves, they are starting to create their own sector, writes Nigel Owen.

The European Investment Bank tapped its January 2028 Australian dollar Climate Awareness Bond on Wednesday. The bond’s green credentials attracted investors rarely seen that far along the credit curve, a promising sign of the market’s maturity.

The European Investment Bank opened a tap to its January 2028 Australian dollar Climate Awareness Bond on Tuesday.

This week's scorecard looks at the progress supranationals have made in their funding programmes this year.

Rating: Aaa/AAA/AAA

Two high quality euro borrowers printed what may be among their last benchmarks of the year this week, squeezing new issue premiums flat to the curve as investors filled their boots.

The European Investment Bank raised €3bn with a December 2023 EARN on Wednesday, coming hot on the heels of Austria's €7.5bn dual tranche, but the flow of euro deals appears to be abating with no borrowers hitting screens for Thursday.

Austria has become the first eurozone sovereign to syndicate a 100 year bond, selling €3.5bn to investors desperate to pile cash into ultra-long paper.