The SFA Blog – Archive
A shifting tide: Uncertainty, regulation, and the cooling of momentum – The Sustainable Bond market has passed a historic milestone, crossing the $6 trillion mark in cumulative issuance. But while the headline is celebratory, the underlying tone in 2025 is far more complex. A mix of global uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and shifting investor sentiment is…
Available on Spotify Early Foundations: ESG Awareness and Policy Catalysts Japan’s journey in Sustainable Finance traces back to the late 1990s, when public awareness of global environmental and social issues was on the rise. In 1999, the country saw its first socially responsible investment (SRI) mutual fund – the Nikko Eco-Fund – marking the dawn…
Is the green finance revolution slowing down—or just getting smarter? Despite a cooling pace of growth, leading analysts forecast that sustainable bond issuance will hold strong at the $1 trillion mark in 2025, signaling consolidation and resilience in a maturing segment of global capital markets. After a meteoric rise throughout the 2010s and early 2020s,…
Are green bonds just a marketing exercise—or do they drive real environmental outcomes? A new study from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) offers a compelling answer: companies that issue green bonds tend to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions over time. In the rapidly growing world of Sustainable Finance, green bonds have been both…
In a year marked by increasing scrutiny of Sustainable Finance frameworks, the March 2025 updates to the Green Loan Principles (GLP), Social Loan Principles (SLP), and Sustainability-Linked Loan Principles (SLLP) represent a welcome recalibration of the market’s guiding standards. These updates—led jointly by the LMA, APLMA, and LSTA—aim to enhance consistency, market integrity, and usability…
In the global race towards sustainability, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have often been overlooked. Yet SMEs represent the vast majority of businesses in Europe, generating over half of the EU’s GDP and accounting for nearly two-thirds of industrial emissions. Europe’s ambitious climate goals rely heavily on these smaller businesses, but until recently, they’ve struggled…