Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Partners with Amundi on Climate Bond Portfolio
Posted on 09/11/2019
The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Amundi announced a US$ 500 million Asia Climate Bond Portfolio. Amundi Asset Management will manage the initial US$ 500 million fixed income portfolio. The emerging market corporate debt strategy will be managed by Amundi’s Global Emerging Market Debt portfolio management team, which is based in London.
Amundi and AIIB seeks to gather an additional US$ 500 million from outside investors. Both parties revealed that a portion of the investment proceeds will be allocated to market education, engagement, and issuer support. Amundi and AIIB also revealed that their “first-of-its-kind Climate Change Investment framework” is a program that takes into account three key variables when weighing investments, which are the portion of green business activities, climate mitigation and resilience to climate change, and to analyze issuers’ ability to cope with climate change.
The types of investments the portfolio could acquire includes labeled green bonds and unlabeled climate bonds. The Asia Climate Bond Portfolio will begin investing in January 2020 and will progressively deploy the committed capital in eligible assets.
In July 2019, AIIB announced a US$ 500 million portfolio that aims to develop debt capital markets for infrastructure, drive responsible investing in fixed income and build a sustainable ESG ecosystem in emerging markets in Asia.