BNP Paribas named Latin America’s Best Bank for Sustainable Finance

BNP Paribas was named Sustainable Finance Bank of the Year for Latin America by LatinFinance, a leading source of intelligence on the financial markets and economies of Latin America and the Caribbean. The LatinFinance 2020 Banks of the Year Awards celebrate the financial institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean that best demonstrated excellence in retail, commercial and investment services over the past year.
 
This award recognises BNP Paribas’ leadership in leveraging sustainable finance across Latin America, in particular through transactions that aim to help address social needs and relief efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are honoured to receive this award from LatinFinance in recognition of our commitment to help our clients in the region as they accelerate their transitions to a lower carbon economy,” says Florence Pourchet, Head of CIB Latin America and CSR Americas. “We continue to see a collective desire from issuers and investors to support sustainable finance initiatives that promote the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”
The award follows similar honours from The Banker, which named BNP Paribas Investment Bank of the Year for Social Bonds and Investment Bank of the Year for Sustainable FIG financing, in recognition of BNP Paribas’ leading role in Covid-19 related issuance throughout the pandemic.

A year of firsts In 2020, BNP Paribas emerged as a leading facilitator of sustainability-related transactions for both corporations and institutions across Latin America. The Bank has also facilitated numerous transition finance arrangements for firms seeking to integrate sustainable programmes and practices as they move to an operating model with lower carbon emissions. Many of these deals represent the first or largest implementation of novel sustainable finance initiatives, including: The first Covid-19 Response Bond in Latin America from Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF). This €700 million, five-year social bond enabled CAF to deliver rapid funding support to the health and economic recovery efforts across all of its member countries. The largest sustainability-linked loan in Latin America and the emerging markets for Mexico’s global cement company CEMEX, which issued a $3.2 billion sustainability-linked loan (SLL) in October as part of its efforts to help achieve net-zero CO2 compliance by 2050. In September, BNP Paribas assisted the Mexican government in the creation of the world’s first sovereign Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) bond. The €750 million financing will directly finance eligible SDG-oriented programmes under the world’s first SDG sovereign bond framework. Chilean pulp and paper company Empresas CMPC S.A. (CMPC) in August launched the most comprehensive sustainability-linked loan in Chile to date, a $100 million syndicated revolving credit facility (RCF) structured as an SLL.