Sovereign Sustainability Linked Bonds: What’s Going On?

The newest product on the sovereign scene is the sustainability linked bond. The product is potentially exciting because, on its face, it seems to remedy some of the incentive problems embedded in the more commonly used “use of proceeds” green bonds. Chile and Uruguay have issued slbs with considerable fanfare. But these are two strong issuers with robust commitments to climate change. The question we are interested in is whether these instruments are providing issuers with incentives to do more for climate change than they would otherwise do. Our guest, Ignacio Lagos, of Cleary Gottlieb, is one of the young stars of the sovereign debt field and talks to us about these deals. And since we had Ignacio with us, we seized the opportunity to also try to understand a bit more about the intriguing Hamilton Bank v. Sri Lanka case and that Registered Holder/Beneficial Owner stuff.

Producer: Leanna Doty