Sustainability-Linked Bonds
Over the years, Enel has been a leading player in sustainable finance, and has led key innovation over recent years. Enel was an early issuer of green bonds and was among the largest corporate issuers of green bonds at the time. Enel placed very successful green bonds and met continuous growing investor demand for its green bonds.
Nevertheless, as a company whose strategy and business model are clearly fully sustainable, Enel decided to issue in 2019 an innovative general corporate purpose financing product, which creates financial incentives for the company to fulfil its sustainable business in order to foster the evolution of sustainable capital markets.
The approach consisted in linking the sustainability strategy of Enel (or its subsidiaries) as issuer or borrower to the terms of general corporate purposes debt, incentivizing the achievement of pre-determined Sustainability Performance Targets (SPTs) within a pre-determined timeline. Enel’s SDG-Linked Bonds issued in September 2019 marked the beginning of the Sustainability-Linked Bond Market.