Below is an excerpt from ISS-Corporate’s recently released article “ISS-Corporate Leads Reviews as EU GBS Gains Traction”. The full article is available on ISS-Corporate’s resources page.
The European Green Bond Standard (EU GBS) came into force on December 21, 2024, marking a significant milestone for EU’s commitment to sustainable finance. Aiming to enhance transparency, credibility, and comparability in green bond markets, the EU GBS sets rigorous requirements for issuers, including alignment of use of proceeds with the EU taxonomy and mandatory pre- and post-issuance disclosures verified by external reviewers.
A Strong Start for EU GBS in 2025
The year started with three issuances from A2A, Île-de-France Mobilités and ABN AMRO, totalling 2.25bn Euros, met with high investor enthusiasm demonstrated by the high levels of oversubscription. April marked the first issuance of EIB of 3bn Euros, which was 13.4 times oversubscribed. 10 further corporate issuers joined starting May, two municipal issuers, one more financial institution and the first sovereign issuer (the Kingdom of Denmark). All offerings seen to date were significantly oversubscribed and several issuances saw the presence of greeniums, emphasizing the high demand for the “gold standard” bonds. According to ISS-Corporate calculations, 7% of all green bonds issued in the EU/EEA area this year had the European Green Bond (EuGB) label.
By:
Ioana Bejan, Associate Vice President, Sustainable Finance Research, ISS-Corporate
