Page 282 - 2019 6th AFIS & ASMMA
P. 282

Another important consideration is the potential funding cost                                                                                                Session I
            advantage that you can derive by issuing a green bond by the covered
            bond market, or by the senior unsecured market. In particular, in the
            first years of green issuance, if you compare the green senior unsecured
            bonds with non-green adjacent issues, you can see that the green senior
            unsecured bonds actually trade notably tighter than their gray adjacent.
            Now this pricing differential is far less straightforward in the covered
            bond market, but things are really changing as the number of green
            alternatives in the senior market expands, and the issue sizes expand in a
            senior unsecured market. I would say, since the second half of 2018, this
            funding cost advantage or this potential funding cost advantage in the
            senior unsecured market has disappeared.


               Now I think the covered bond market is really doing a good job in
            terms of catching up of green issuance. In 2018, we have seen almost five
            billion in green issuance, and this year, there has been quite a number
            of green bonds supply. Not so much in the euro-denominated space
            but more in other currencies. Now I would like to discuss some of the                       Now I've listed all ten ambitions here on this particular slide; but
            regulatory impacts and how they could impact the green covered bond                       no worries, I'm only going to discuss the first one, also briefly touched
            markets. And with regulatory impacts, I'm obviously referring to the                      upon by the Luca in his introduction speech. That is namely the EU
            European Commission's very ambitious sustainable action plan.                             classification system for sustainable activities called the taxonomy.




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