Connecting with sustainable debt investors

Connecting with sustainable debt investors is a practical guide for companies seeking to engage fixed income investors on sustainability. Bondholders are long-term, downside-focused holders of a company’s debt, and sustainability risk is increasingly treated as credit risk: it shapes how investors assess an issuer’s ability to repay, and can influence cost of capital, demand at issuance and disclosure expectations.

The guide covers:

• Why fixed income investors care about sustainability, and how different ESG-labelled bond structures work
• The current sustainable debt landscape, including the market shift toward use-of-proceeds structures, the growth of transition finance, adaptation, nature and just transition themes, and the rise of private credit
• How to identify debt investors, mapping the strategies, risk appetites and sustainability interests of different institution types
• What information investors need, how to present it, who should collate it and when to publish
• How to report credibly on both use-of-proceeds and sustainability-linked instruments
• How to communicate a credible strategy through annual updates, non-deal roadshows and deal roadshows

This forms part of our wider series on investor engagement, supporting companies to identify and target investors, understand investment approaches and needs, integrate sustainability in investor relations communications and meetings. You can find the series here.