Online articles

• ASFI levels up in leadership on sustainability

  The Australian Sustainable Finance Institute has a new board, a more permanent role and a freshly minted executive officer, Kristy Graham. The institute’s goals have not changed: to drive realignment of the Australian financial services system so more money flows to support sustainability. Graham updates KangaNews Sustainable Finance on developments including taxonomy progress and work with international peers.

• Australia prepares for mandatory climate reporting

  The Australian government will launch a public consultation on mandatory climate reporting this year, starting the process of aligning the country with its global peers. Market participants say the move, while overdue, will be a boon to business, capital flows and the country’s reputation as a responsible international citizen.

• Investor sentiment unveiled

  KangaNews Sustainable Finance and Commonwealth Bank of Australia conducted their third annual survey of environmental, social and governance sentiment among Australian fixed-income investors in August 2022. Sustainable investment approaches are evolving but asset managers report that, in some cases, they are effectively being forced to take backward steps by asset owners.

• Marking 10 years of progress, CEFC bets on Australia’s green future

  Clean Energy Finance Corporation has committed more than A$10 billion of investment in support of Australia’s net zero transition, catalysing about A$37 billion in private capital investment in the clean-energy economy in the process. As the green bank marks its first decade of investment, its Sydney-based head of debt markets, Richard Lovell, highlights lessons learned and future steps.

• Momentum behind sustainable finance innovation

  The size and breadth of the sustainable finance market has grown and with it the ambition of its participants. In September, KangaNews Sustainable Finance and Westpac Institutional Bank hosted a group of borrowers, each of which has expanded the boundaries of what is achievable in the Australian market, to discuss their motivations, aspirations and challenges.

• Raising the bar on sustainability best practice

  The global sustainable finance market continues to strive for maximum impact and unimpeachable standards for all participants. A group of Australian corporate borrowers, speaking at a September roundtable hosted by ING and KangaNews Sustainable Finance, say external pressures to be best in breed are significant but these align with their own corporate goals.

• SLL innovation continues

  A pair of Australian sustainability-linked loans completed in September demonstrate the instrument’s evolution and ever-expanding use cases. North Queensland Airports tied its loan to the emerging sustainable finance area of biodiversity, while Pact Group demonstrated the applicability of sustainability-linked funding to the manufacturing sector.

• Sustainability's deep roots in a changing world

  Susan Barron, London-based global head of sustainable capital markets at Barclays, recently visited Australia to speak with clients on global sustainable finance developments and opportunities. Together with the bank’s Sydney-based head of debt capital markets, Australia and New Zealand, Duncan Beattie, she sat down with KangaNews Sustainable Finance to share the latest on how the environment of 2022 has shaped...

• The next generation of sustainable finance challenges

  In late September, ANZ, KangaNews Sustainable Finance and Pollination Group brought together prominent sustainability investors and corporate issuers to discuss emerging challenges in sustainable finance and how to solve them. Reporting standards, greenwashing risk, natural capital and biodiversity, and the danger of being overwhelmed as more areas are added to the sustainability mix top the list of challenging...

• The scale of the task

  The importance of decarbonisation to the Australian economy is now almost universally accepted. The remaining questions surround whether it can be achieved quickly enough and the scale of costs and benefits deriving from the pace at which transition is achieved. National Australia Bank has published detailed research on the size of the task at hand and is showing how it feeds down  to decisions taken with...

• The sovereign pay-off

  Scoring and pricing sovereign borrowers on the basis of environmental, social and governance performance could have a greater impact on global sustainability than anything else capital markets can hope to achieve. But sovereign debt is the least developed major global asset class when it comes to integrating sustainability factors.

• Transparency and action: the greenwashing risk antidote

  As momentum in sustainable finance has grown over recent years, driven by increasing pressure from climate change and sustainable development as well as a vast increase in capital flows into sustainable investments, greenwashing has become more nuanced and more challenging for issuers to navigate.

• Understanding ESG risks and opportunities in investment management

  Stewart Brentnall, chief investment officer, and Alexis Cheang, head of investment stewardship, at TCorp in Sydney, discuss why it is vital for all participants in the investment ecosystem to integrate a broad range of ESG factors into the decision making process.