Free content

The World Bank has been at the forefront of SRI capital markets since it sold its first green bond in 2008. It reached a new frontier in March with its first green euro benchmark. Tessa Wilkie speaks to Heike Reichelt, the World Bank’s head of investor relations and new products, about the supranational’s green issuance strategy.

Agency issuers have this year emerged blinking from under the shadow that the eurozone sovereign debt crisis has cast across European capital markets since it erupted in 2010. Borrowing conditions in the first few months of 2014 have even been better than anyone dared hope at the end of last year.

Green bonds came of age last year in February 2013 when the International Finance Corporation sold the first green bond in benchmark size. But now issuers are looking to mirror the success of green bonds with other capital markets instruments backing sustainable and responsible projects. Tessa Wilkie reports.

Sovereign, supranational and agency investors are keen to buy into structures that can protect them from the impact of the tapering of quantitative easing in the US. Phil Thornton looks at whether buyers will be prepared to sacrifice liquidity in exchange for more tailored products.

Sovereigns, supranationals, and agencies will need to re-evaluate their funding plans for 2014 as the effect of Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe’s economic reforms, dubbed ‘Abenomics’, begins to be felt in the bond market. How has investor behaviour changed and how will borrowers adapt? Kathleen Gallagher investigates.

From eurozone debt problems and the reaction to the US tapering quantitative easing, to the impact of regulation, sovereigns supranationals and agencies have found themselves with plenty of obstacles to manoeuvre around since the financial crisis began. Nathan Collins looks at how they are evolving their borrowing strategies in the new environment.

Sovereign, supranational and agency borrowers have greater flexibility to dip in and out of various currencies than perhaps any other class of issuer in the capital markets, something that many use to great effect. Nathan Collins outlines the pools of liquidity that canny borrowers should be looking at in 2014.

China’s plans to roll out a double-barrel fiscal and monetary stimulus package in the months ahead, in an attempt to stave off a marked slowdown in the world’s second largest economy, could offer a sliver of hope for Latin America’s struggling commodities exporters

The decision by the IDB to site its 2015 annual meetings in South Korea highlights the region’s desire to build on a fast growing trade and business relationship

Leading economists have urged Latin American policymakers not to abandon the economic reforms

Amid pressure to revive Europe’s economy by supplying credit to small and medium-sized enterprises, covered bond issuers are coming up with innovative ways to pool SME assets. In the hunt for better ratings, they are looking to pass-through structures but as the definition of covered bonds broadens, Will Caiger-Smith examines what dangers lie in wait for investors.

The European Banking Authority’s effort to improve transparency on balance sheet encumbrance has come to nothing. The draft guideline, which will be finalised by June, is practically useless because it doesn’t include emergency central bank liquidity which is the largest and most important source of encumbrance. But that’s probably just as well, for if this disclosure became public knowledge, it would create just the sort of negative feedback loop that brought down the UK’s Northern Rock.