After another record-breaking year for the green bond market, Environmental Finance is preparing to honour the market leaders as it calls for entries for its annual Green Bond Awards.
The awards seek to reward those that excel and innovate, or have played a key role in developing the rapidly evolving green bond market. They cover the labelled green bond market for the calendar year 2016.
Among the winners of last year's awards was the first green covered bond from Berlin Hyp, the largest ever municipal green bond from Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority and the largest ever project bond for offshore wind, from WindMW. Yes Bank and the IFC won a special award for innovation for their 'back-to-back' issue; the Harmonised Framework for Impact Reporting - the work of numerous development banks - was named best initiative; and the Climate Bonds Initiative's Sean Kidney was named Personality of the Year.
Read our coverage of the winners here.
This year, a number of new categories have been added:
- Bond of the Year (social or sustainability)
- Lead manager of the Year (corporate)
- Lead manager of the Year (SSA)
- Lead manager of the Year (municipal)
- Best external opinion provider
- Best impact reporting
- Best law firm
- Best exchange
- Best index
These are in addition to last year's categories of:
- Bond of the Year (Corporate)
- Bond of the Year (SSA)
- Bond of the Year (Municipal)
- Bond of the Year (Bank)
- Project Bond of the Year
- Asset-based bond of the Year
- Special Award for Innovation (Structure)
- Special Award for Innovation (Use of proceeds)
- Initiative of the Year
- Personality of the Year
- Biggest Issuer (Corporate)
- Biggest Issuer (SSA)
- Biggest Issuer (Municipal)
- Biggest Issuer (Bank)
- Biggest underwriter
The judging process has also been revamped. The winners of most categories will be selected by a panel of investors, who will vote anonymously for their choice in each category. The exception to this will be for the awards for the biggest issuers and underwriters, which will be selected based on data from Environmental Finance's green bond database.
The process of assembling the leading investors in the market has already begun.
To enter the awards, visit:
https://www.environmental-finance.com/content/awards/green-bond-awards-2017/