Covered Bond Opinion

Accusations of greenwashing have been infrequent in the 14 year old green bond market, which mainly sticks to uncontroversial assets, such as renewable energy and railways. The sustainability-linked bond market is only a toddler, but already a much more difficult child. No wonder: it is handling tougher material.

A lion walks the streets of Rome, an owl shrieks in the marketplace at noon.

Does the world need another taxonomy of what is green?

Investors had plenty of appetite for a super-high yielding additional tier one from Piraeus Bank this week. Will they still be hungry when Greek banks try and issue large volumes of senior debt for their regulatory requirements?

Leaving investment banking to join the world of impact investing and environmental NGOs is not something people do lightly. But having made that move a decade ago, Keith Tuffley has been tempted back, to help shape the response of Citigroup’s investment bank to the accelerating rise of sustainability.

European lawmakers are introducing new rules and restrictions for banks in areas where supervisors could be far more effective acting on a case-by-case basis.

The skittish state of investor demand that was recently on display in covered bonds may herald a reassessment of credit, particularly as spreads are back to pre-pandemic levels and seemingly have limited potential for further performance.

Hedge funds have taken a lot of heat for their role in inflating order books and flexing spreads, only to flip out and take profits at the first opportunity. But despite the awkward and at times antagonistic presence of such funds, issuers are coming to learn that they are probably better off having them in the order book than not.

As inflation indicators across the globe begin to point to a period of sustained growth, equity investors have fretted over where to put their money instead of tech stocks, whose valuations have reached gargantuan multiples. There is a compelling argument to be made for rotating into Greece, specifically its banks, which will have to finance a new wave of economic growth.

Evidence suggests European lenders are a little too optimistic about the quality of their credit exposures after the pandemic.