ESG will be high on the agenda at Global ABS, which starts in Barcelona on Tuesday. Market participants are particularly keen to meet with solar issuers to gauge the possibility of bringing a landmark public deal to market this year.
“I want to see how people are feeling about ESG,” said Janet Oram, head of ABS at USS. “There’s a couple of solar issuers attending that are on people’s meeting lists. I’m curious to find out whether that’s genuinely going to be an emerging asset class in Europe.”
Some promising steps have been towards such a deal. Enpal, which is in Barcelona, opened a warehouse with Citi and M&G last year with a view to doing a public deal this year. Other issuers working towards deals are also in Barcelona.
ESG panels prominent
ESG also features prominently in the conference’s panels, which has won praise from KKR director Anirban Ghosh.
“ESG is an increased area of focus for us,” he said. “It’s commendable that there are panels around green and social bonds. ESG is resulting in new opportunities around green energy lending, such as residential solar.”
One of the panels will focus on greenwashing. As there have been a limited number of green deals in European ABS, there have not been many accusations of greenwashing. But the topic is important to investors.
“It’s not always obvious why a transaction has got an [ESG] label, though there haven’t been too many of those in ABS,” Oram explained.
Green verification has been an area of increased focussed this year. In February, GlobalCapital reported that PCS,which is known for verifying the ‘Simple, Transparent and Standardised’ hallmark, was considering adding a green verification to its offering.