The Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) celebrate together the exchange’s achievement of 1000 bonds on the Luxembourg Green Exchange (LGX). EIB’s recent 10-year USD 1.5 billion Global Climate Awareness Bond is the 1,000th bond on one of the world's largest platforms for securities with a focus on sustainability, and the latest addition to the more than 50 green and sustainability bonds issued by EIB and currently displayed on LGX.
The 1,000 bonds currently listed on LuxSE and displayed on LGX are raising a total of more than EUR 500 billion for green, social and sustainable development projects across the world, with the aim of contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change. These global goals inspired the establishment of LGX in 2016.
As a testimony of its global reach, LGX now counts 170 issuers across different sectors from 35 different countries, including green bonds from sovereign issuers and the social bonds issued by the European Commission. In 2020, LGX won the UN Global Climate Action Award for its pioneering role in accelerating financing for climate solutions.
“We would like to thank all our impact-conscious issuers for their leading role in the transition to a low-carbon and more inclusive economy. It is a privilege to mark this extraordinary milestone with the EIB, who kick-started the green bond market and has played a crucial role in its development. The EIB has helped put Europe in the driving seat for sustainable finance and leads the way towards common standards and more harmonised frameworks for sustainability funding and lending,” commented Julie Becker, CEO of LuxSE.
Exponential growth of LGX reflects market development
LuxSE established LGX in 2016 to unlock sustainable capital and facilitate sustainable investment. The platform has seen exponential growth since then, highlighting the increasingly important role of sustainability in international capital markets. What started as a platform for green bonds in 2016 has grown in both size and product range, responding to the increasing need for transparency, accountability, reliability and comparability of sustainable securities displayed on LGX. LGX now encompasses all categories of bonds with a focus on sustainability, with mandatory requirements for transparency and reporting.
“This 1,000th sustainable bond displayed on LGX illustrates the role that Luxembourg’s sustainable finance ecosystem is playing globally in raising the public and private capital needed to achieve the objectives of the Paris Accord on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals. It also underlines the innovative cooperation between the European Investment Bank and the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, which has helped shape the direction of sustainable finance for more than a decade now, as it did when issuing the world’s first green bond in Luxembourg in 2007,” commented Luxembourg Minister of Finance Pierre Gramegna.
Part of a global trend
Almost 40 markets world-wide have a sustainability bond listing segment. To learn more, visit the SSE’s database of stock exchange sustainability activities. Currently, the database has data on 107 stock exchanges and tracks progress on key activities where exchanges are promoting sustainable business and investment practices. It is the largest data set of its kind and the data is freely accessible.
