Championing sustainable finance and much more

In this edition:

or the 6th time since 2017, the Luxembourg Stock Exchange (LuxSE) was named ‘Exchange of the Year’ at Environmental Finance’s Bond Awards. This award recognises the work that we accomplished in two of our main areas of focus: 

Advancing gender finance

In May 2022, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UN Women, thus committing to advancing financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment.

As the first step of our cooperation, we have started flagging all gender-focused bonds displayed on LGX.

In 2022, we increased our focus on developing sustainable finance initiatives in emerging markets, with cooperation agreements signed with our counterparts in Cabo Verde, Rwanda, Western Africa, Vietnam, Chile and India.

In the context of this award, our CEO Julie Becker was interviewed by Environmental Finance about some of the main projects that drove our exchange in the field of sustainable finance over the last twelve months, including gender finance, growth in emerging markets and our initiatives linked to data and education.

We would like to congratulate all our issuers who were nominated at the Environmental Finance’s Bond Awards and the Climate Bonds Awards. Thank you for your outstanding efforts and contribution to sustainable finance!

Back in 2019, Danish power company Ørsted issued a GBP 350 m green bond to finance two offshore wind projects in the North Sea, which are both in operation since then and can power 2.5 m homes. One of them, Hornsea 2, became the world’s largest windfarm with a capacity of renewable energy of 1,320 GW.

Thanks to a USD 8 bn sustainability bond issued in 2020, the World Bank allocated USD 600 m to a social project aimed at facilitating the delivery of social programmes for Filipinos impacted by COVID -19, and more specifically women. The project is expected to promote financial literacy and enable 4.4 m households to benefit from grants, amongst other objectives. 

On 14 March, the classes for the first cohort of the ESG Analysis Certificate started. Organised by GOVERNART and Bolsa de Santiago, this is the first and only Specialized Training Program in Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) Analysis leading to certification in Latin America. The initiative includes 19 modules for a total of 38 hours of virtual classes using the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) standards as a key resource. The LuxSE, through the LGX Academy, is collaborating closely with Santiago SE and Governart to support this initiative, notably on the certification side. 

At this year’s edition of Luxembourg For Finance’ Sustainable Finance Forum, our CEO Julie Becker shared her views on the need for more  sustainable finance knowledge in the capital market industry, and explained why the knowledge gap is one of the biggest obstacles to the growth of sustainable finance. 

Watch the replay

LGX STATS
as at 31 March 2023