Ahren Lester

Articles by Ahren Lester

  • Sustainable bond market sees weakest first-half issuance for four years

    02 July 2024

    Sustainable bond issuance in 2024 has crossed the $500 billion milestone in 2024, but remains 14% behind 2023 totals as all four major labels experience a slowdown and market share weakens.

  • Japan: Australia 'should have issued a transition bond'

    02 July 2024

    A senior Japanese government official said Australia should have pursued a 'transition bond' label for its sovereign sustainable bond programme as a way of encouraging key hard-to-abate sectors to start seriously thinking about their own transition.

  • New ICMA metrics could help 'accelerate' biodiversity finance

    01 July 2024

    An influential list of key performance indicators (KPIs) deemed appropriate for structuring sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) has been updated - with the newly added metrics dominated by biodiversity-related datapoints, reflecting keen investor interest in the theme.

  • 'Greenwashing' is the 'Loch Ness monster' of the green bond market

    01 July 2024

    A veteran green bond market participant said 'greenwashing' was not really present in the green bond market despite substantial hand-wringing around the topic.

  • First 'blue bond' in Vietnam issued

    01 July 2024

    Southeast Asia Commercial Bank (SeABank) has raised $75 million from a sustainable bond which is the first in Vietnam to include a 'blue bond' tranche focused on sustainable marine and water projects.

  • ICMA Principles to publish whitepaper on SLB 'best practices'

    26 June 2024

    The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) working group on sustainability-linked bonds will publish a paper on the "best practices" in the market after ascertaining a "clearer idea" of how to improve the instrument.

  • ICMA working on detailed 'green enabling' project checklist after guidance

    26 June 2024

    The International Capital Market Association (ICMA)-administered Principles is working on a "detailed checklist" to help issuers and investors use its newly released 'green enabling' project guidance.

  • Dominican Republic launches $750m debut green bond

    26 June 2024

    The Dominican Republic plans to raise $750 million from its debut sovereign green bond.

  • ICMA, LMA release 'sustainability-linked loan bond' guidance

    25 June 2024

    Two debt industry bodies have jointly published guidance for the issuance of bonds dedicated to financing sustainability-linked loans (SLLs) in order to develop a new sustainable finance product and support the credibility of the performance-based lending instrument.

  • Disclosure data checklist among ICMA SLB Principles updates

    25 June 2024

    The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) has published an updated version of the Sustainability-Linked Bond Principles (SLBP) which includes a new disclosure data checklist intended to "harmonise" and strengthen disclosures for the performance-based instrument.