18 January 2019

FTSE Russell launches Chinese green bond index

Published by Money Management – 18th Jan 2019

FTSE Russell has announced the launch of the Chinese Green bond Index series, which will benchmark securities where proceeds are used to finance environmental projects in China.

Global index, analytics and data provider, FTSE Russell, has launched the Chinese Green Bond Index Series, which will track bonds where the proceeds are used to finance climate and environmental projects in mainland China.

The index, which would include 126 bonds and over of around 75 per cent of all green bonds in China, would aim to measure the performance of onshore Chinese yuan-determined fixed-rate government, agency and corporate debt issued that were labelled ‘green’ by the issuer.

FTSE Russell said China represented the second-largest green bond market globally, with $37 billion issued in 2017, and that the firm provided China-linked benchmarks with around $27 billion of equity assets under management benchmarked to or tracking FTSE China indexes.

The company’s chief executive, benchmarks, Waqas Samad, said China green bonds issuance represented 23 per cent of global green bond issues in 2017 and that this market was expected to continue to grow.

“The combination of FTSE Russell’s strong capabilities in fixed income, sustainable investment and regional presence in China allow us to develop innovative tools to help meet the growing demand from our global customer base.”