Winners revealed in Environmental Finance's Bond Awards 2020

Environmental Finance's Bond Awards were expanded again this year to reflect the growth and evolution of the green, social and sustainability (GSS) bond markets and to include the nascent GSS loan market.

New categories include:

• Award for Innovation – Bond Structure (social bond) (the Republic of Ecuador);
• Loan Structurer/Arranger/Coordinator of the year (BNP Paribas);
• Impact Report of the Year for Investors (Zurich Insurance); and
• Green, Social and Sustainability Loan of the Year (Cofco International)

In total 49 awards were handed out, with winners spanning the globe, from Japan to Quebec, and Chile to Norway.

A prominent success story this year was HSBC, which claimed victories in five of the nine Lead Manager of the Year categories. It was also the top underwriter for the green bond market, serving as lead manager on deals worth a combined $14.8 billion, according to figures from Environmental Finance's Bond Database.

Other multiple award winners were BNP Paribas, the Connecticut Green Bank and the Republic of Ecuador.

Esohe Denise Odaro won Personality of the Year, in recognition of her tireless efforts to develop the market, particularly when it comes to impact reporting. Judges described her as "very hard working, precise, and fair", and said "without her tireless advocacy and willingness to work with investors the impact bond market would not be anywhere near its current position".

The highly regarded awards cover the labelled bond markets for the calendar year 2019 and seek to reward those that excel and innovate, or that have played a key role in developing these rapidly evolving markets. Entries were judged by an independent panel of judges, drawn from leading investment firms.

Congratulations to all of the winners and many thanks to the hard-working judges. Here's hoping for further growth and innovation in 2020, despite the current adverse conditions.

A list of all the winners can be found here.

The winners' summaries were written by Ahren Lester, Ashton Rowntree, Christopher Marchant, Graham Cooper, Lorna Davies, Michael Hurley and Peter Cripps.

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