Author: Helena Zhu

22 Sep INSIGHTS | Best of Both Worlds: ESG in Private Equity

Posted at 16:30 by Helena Zhu

Environmental, social, and governance have now become widely practiced by the top investment firms worldwide, influencing billions of dollars in investment decisions and pushing companies to meet investors’ demand for more sustainable and equitable practices. However, the private equity market still sees relatively little action...

11 Aug INSIGHTS | Internal Carbon Price: an Innovative Strategy for Sustainable Growth

Posted at 14:38 by Helena Zhu

An internal carbon price is an instrument used by entities such as companies and financial institutions to incentivize climate action by assigning monetary value to carbon emissions. The financial cost of carbon emissions is often invisible yet substantial. Nations are beginning to factor the social...

21 Jul INSIGHTS | ESG Disclosure for Taiwan-listed Companies

Posted at 15:13 by Helena Zhu

Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues are undeniably becoming key components of disclosure for corporates and financial institutes around the world. In Asia, a flurry of ESG-related disclosure rules has hit the market in recent years, driving companies to issue sustainability reports and communicate...

16 Jun INSIGHTS | Transition Finance: Funding the Green Transformation

Posted at 15:04 by Helena Zhu

Green finance has gained strong momentum in recent years, with cumulative green bond issuance snowballing to USD1.83tr as of June 2022, and ESG- and sustainability-themed financing increasingly available. Yet, a successful and effective economic transition from business-as-usual to sustainable requires investments in undertakings such as...

25 May VanEck to List Australia’s First Carbon Credit ETF

Posted at 16:17 by Helena Zhu

Investment management firm VanEck will list the first carbon credit exchange traded fund (ETF) on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), as reported by the Australian Financial Review on May 24. The fund, VanEck Global Carbon Credits ETF (Synthetic), may begin trading under the ticker XC02...

25 May Japan to Issue USD157bn in Green Transition Bond

Posted at 15:59 by Helena Zhu

Japan has laid out a plan on May 19 to issue JPY20tr (USD157bn) in green transition bonds to accelerate its transition to carbon neutrality, as reported by Reuters on the same day. Details of the green transition bonds will undergo further discussion later this year....

19 May INSIGHTS | SEC Climate Disclosure Proposal: A Step Towards Mandatory Climate Disclosure in the United States

Posted at 15:08 by Helena Zhu

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its long-anticipated proposal for climate-related financial disclosure in March 2022. The proposal is historic as it marks the first effort by any US financial regulator to standardize climate-related disclosure. Back in June 2021, the finance ministers and...

10 May BNP Paribas Launches Sustainable Asian Cities Bond

Posted at 16:38 by Helena Zhu

BNP Paribas Asset Management (BNPP AM), the asset management arm of BNP Paribas [BNP:FP], has launched the Sustainable Asian Cities Bond, a new fixed income strategy aiming to support sustainable urbanization in Asian cities, as reported by ESG Today on May 9. The fund is...

10 May HSBC Launches Discretionary Biodiversity Mandate in Asia

Posted at 14:52 by Helena Zhu

HSBC [HSBC:US] has launched a Global Biodiversity Discretionary Strategy for its Global Private Banking (GPB) services in Asia, as reported by The Asset on May 4. Managed by Lombard Odier, a founding member of the Natural Capital Investment Alliance, the strategy marks the bank’s first...

28 Apr INSIGHTS | China’s First ESG Disclosure Guidance

Posted at 14:22 by Helena Zhu

As more enterprises around the world adopt ESG standards for non-financial information disclosure, Chinese enterprises face a pressing need to catch up as they compete in markets with rising demand for quality ESG data. Many globally recognized and most prevalent standards, such as the GRI...

10 Mar INSIGHTS | Time to Adapt: Financing for a Warming World

Posted at 16:15 by Helena Zhu

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading authority on climate science, released the “Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Report” (WG2 report) on February 27, 2022, as the second part of its sixth assessment report (AR6). The 3675-page report summarized the...

17 Feb INSIGHTS | Climate Risk Stress Testing in the Banking Industry

Posted at 15:40 by Helena Zhu

Stress testing is not an unfamiliar term to the financial sector. Ever since the global financial crisis, financial institutions have used stress tests as a key tool for assessing risks and resiliency of the financial system as well as individual institutions. With climate change increasingly...

13 Jan Kickstarting Product Carbon Footprinting in China

Posted at 16:20 by Helena Zhu

On January 5, the Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning (CAEP) released the China Products Carbon Footprint Factors Database (中国产品全生命周期温室气体排放系数集), the first open, transparent, and continuously updated product carbon footprinting (PCF) emission factor database in China. The development of this database involved voluntary contributions from 54...

16 Dec Tackling the Other Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Methane

Posted at 14:25 by Helena Zhu

The conversation around decarbonization and climate change mitigation has long been dominated by the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most common greenhouse gas. However, during this year’s United Nations climate summit COP26, methane as another form of greenhouse gas rose to the spotlight in...