Media release
For immediate release

Swedish bank SEB tops annual Green Bond Underwriters League tableLondon, 15th January 2015 – Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) achieved the top spot of the 2014
Green Bonds Underwriters League Table according to figures released today by the Climate Bonds
Initiative. The news follows yesterday’s announcement that $36.6bn green bonds were issued in2014 making it the biggest year ever for green bonds.
SEB was involved in $3.8bn of green bond deals. The race was tight for second and third place withless than US$40m between BAML in second with $3.68bn and Credit Agricole in a close third with
$3.65bn.

Millions (USD)

2014 Underwriters League Table
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000500-Despite leading the Q4 2014 league table, Morgan Stanley came in fourth in the overall year
standings with $2.8bn. JPM, the runner-up for Q4, had a strong second half of the year, underwriting
green deals for several US municipalities and supranational issuers, but they only claimed 5th place
for the year overall, with final total of $2.4bn.
Climate Bonds Initiative CEO, Sean Kidney said: ‘Without investment banks, there would be no green
bonds market: they are important in seeking out potential issuers and bringing the bonds to market.
After a great year in 2014 we figure the bankers will soon be setting their performance targets for2015. We believe we can reach $100bn of green bonds issuance globally in 2015, and doing so would
take a powerful message about investors and issuers driving change to governments at the UN
Climate Conference in Paris in December.’Quarter 4 underwriters league tableMorgan Stanley (MS) tops the Q4 underwriter league table, making $1.1bn of green bonds deals
during the quarter, with JP Morgan following closely in second place with $887m of green bond

deals. Both were carried over the line by big municipal green bonds, which pushed them ahead ofstaunch rivals Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) and Citi, who come in third ($763m) and fourth($756m) respectively.

Millions

Q4 2014 Underwriters League Table
1,200
1,000
800
600
400200-Last quarter’s (Q3) leaders, Credit Agricole CIB (CA-CIB) and SEB, slipped down to fifth and seventh
place for Q4, with HSBC in sixth, who climbed up the rankings by being involved in two of the fivelargest deals of Q4.
Top deals in Q4 2014:
Name

Size

Underwriter

KfW
EIB
NRW Bank
Verbund$1.5bn$1bn
EUR 500m ($627m)
EUR 500m ($627m)

Ontario

CA$ 500m ($448m)

BAML, Citi and MS
JPM and MS
DZBK and HSBC
Commerzbank, JPM, Raiffeisen, Societe
Generale and Unicredit
BAML, CA-CIB, HSBC and RBC

KfW’s $1.5bn green bond was the biggest deal of the quarter and helped push BAML (ranked 3rd),
CITI (4th) and Morgan Stanley (1st) to the top of the Q4 table. Morgan Stanley’s victory was also
through their co-lead on the EIB $1bn green bond along with JP Morgan (ranked 2nd), while BAML
was also involved in the Ontario green bond.
NAB and DZ Bank also made it to the top 10 – both on the back of only one deal: NAB managed its
own inaugural green bond, A$300m, in December, while DZ Bank’s only deal in Q4 was NRW Bank’s
second green bond offering, of which DZ co-led with HSBC.
Commerzbank, JPM, Raiffeisen, Societe Generale and Unicredit all made the list from being part ofVerbund’s inaugural green bond deal.

---------------------------------------------ENDS--------------------------------------------For more information or to arrange interviews, please contact:
Rozalia Walencik, Communication, rozalia@climatebonds.net +44 772 382 8954
Sean Kidney, CEO, Climate Bonds Initiative, sean@climatebonds.net, +44-75-2506-8331
About Climate Bonds Initiative: The Climate Bonds Initiative is an investor-focused not-for-profit. It
is the only organization in the world focusing on mobilizing the USD 100 trillion bond market forclimate change solutions. www.climatebonds.net @ClimateBonds---------------------------------------------EXTRAS--------------------------------------------Notes on the figures:
There are plenty of ways to make a league table and each bring with them different outcomes sohere are a few notes...
Graphs include only the largest underwriters in each time period but there are many others thathave underwritten deals.
All data includes only bonds labelled and marketed to investors as ‘green’ or ‘climate’, the primarydefinition of this market. This means that figures do not include renewable energy projects orother bonds linked to green projects but not labelled and marketed as such.
Totals are calculated by taking the total deal size divided by the number of lead managers as is thegeneral practice
Other league tables representing a larger market would usually present data by year, by currency
or both. Given that this green bonds market is still relatively small, there is limited scope to breakup the market at this stage.
Some issuances fall on the cusp of the quarter in which case we use the announcement date asrecorded on Bloomberg to determine its quarter.