London’s financial centre hosts the world’s largest trading venue for green bonds, according to a review by not-for-profit organisation Climate Bonds Initiative. A total of $5.74bn of such bonds were bought and sold on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in the first quarter of 2019, according to data from the Climate Bonds Initiative, Refinitiv and Bloomberg.
Only the value of bonds traded on all German venues come close to the LSE activity, with a total of $5.71bn. These are securities that are listed on all Deutsche Börse stock exchanges, excluding TradeGate, the private investor specialist. Indeed, the trading of green bonds listed only on one German exchange is considerably smaller.
Dublin is the third largest green bond bourse, with $2.92bn, followed by Luxembourg Green Exchange with $2.67bn.
Spain is the fifth largest jurisdiction for green bonds in western Europe after the UK, Germany, Ireland and Luxembourg, thanks to $1.96bn traded on its corporate debt and private fixed-income AIAF exchange, which is based in Madrid.
The Singapore Exchange is the most active green bond trading venue in Asia, with $1.26bn, followed by the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Philippine Stock Exchange, with $609m and $287m, respectively.
Overall, $34.5bn-worth of green bonds was traded globally between January and March 2019, according to the Climate Bonds Initiative. The value of over-the-counter green bond trading was $6.27bn, of which $1.92bn was exchanged through the China interbank bond market.
Although North America was the largest green bond issuer in the first quarter of 2019, with a total of $14.7bn, the region’s trading venues do not appear among the most active over that period.
