The European Union priced its debut green bond on Tuesday, raising a massive €12bn via 15Y bonds priced at 0.453%. This is the world’s largest sustainable bond ever, surpassing the UK’s £10bn debut issuance last month. EU’s new green bond met with very strong demand from investors as orders exceeded €135bn, 11.25x issue size. The issue is part of an overall plan to raise €250bn of green bonds out of the EU’s €800bn Covid-19 recovery fund, as per the FT. The bonds priced at a greenium (Term of the day, explained below) of about 2.5bp over its older non-green comparable bonds as per EU’s Budget Commissioner Johannes Hahn. Floortje Merten, a strategist at ABN Amro Bank NV commented on the greenium, “The bond can perform — we think the greenium can grow to potentially around five basis points.”
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