Accelerating on the bank's commitment to sustainability
Follows the launch of a Group-wide Sustainability Bond Framework
UniCredit S.p.A. has successfully issued its inaugural fix-to-floater Senior Preferred Green Bond for EUR 1.0 billion with an 8-year maturity and a call after year 7, targeted to institutional investors. The issuance follows a book building process that gathered strong demand of more than EUR 3.25 billion from more than 200 investors globally.
The initial guidance of 120bps over the 7-year mid-swap rate has been tightened by 30bps, achieving a final spread of 90bps, resulting in a fixed coupon of 0.80% paid annually, with an issue/re-offer price of 99.953%.
The bond has been distributed to different institutional investor categories such as funds and asset managers (57%), insurance and pension funds (29%), banks and private banks (9%), official institutions (5%). Overall, 87% of the bonds were placed with investors with an ESG/SRI/Green focus. The demand came from the following main regions: France (30%), Germany/Austria (20%), UK (13%), Benelux (9%), Iberia (7%), Italy (7%), Nordics (6%), Swiss (5%) and other (3%).
Commenting on the issuance, Andrea Orcel, CEO of UniCredit, said: "This inaugural Green Bond serves as a clear indication of how central ESG is to our long term offering, underpinning the very essence of how we do sustainable business, for the benefit of all our stakeholders, but especially for our clients and those communities within which we operate."
The bond proceeds are dedicated to fund renewable energy, clean transportation, and green buildings with the aim of supporting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) number 7 (Affordable & Clean Energy), number 9 (Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure) and number 11 (Sustainable Cities & Communities).
The issuance further underlines UniCredit's strong commitment to sustainability and the strategic importance of ESG for the Group. The inaugural green bond issuance took place under UniCredit's newly established Sustainability Bond Framework. The framework allows the Group's main issuers UniCredit S.p.A., UniCredit Bank AG and UniCredit Bank Austria to issue green, social, and sustainability bonds, which will be a recurring part of the Group's funding activity going forward.
The Framework is in line with the 2021 version of the Green and Social Bond Principles and the Sustainability Bond Guidelines of the International Capital Market Association. Annual reporting will ensure the transparent allocation and tracking of proceeds also in terms of impact achieved.
UniCredit Bank AG was mandated as the Green Structurer and acted as Sole Bookrunner and Lead Manager for the placement. BBVA, Crédit Agricole CIB, IMI-Intesa Sanpaolo, ING, Natixis, NatWest Markets acted as Joint Lead Managers (no books).
The bond was issued under UniCredit S.p.A.'s EUR 60 billion EMTN programme with the following expected ratings: Baa1 (Stable) from Moody's, BBB (Stable) from S&P and BBB- (Stable) from Fitch. It will rank pari passu with the outstanding Senior Preferred debt of the issuer.
Listing will be on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange.
UniCredit's ESG progress to date has seen the bank reduce its GHG emissions by 60% as of 2020 (Scope 1 and 2) compared to the 2008 baseline with the long-term target of an 80% reduction by 2030. UniCredit is also on track to become completely paperless and remove all single-use plastic from its buildings by 2023. In addition, in 2020 we updated our coal policy with a commitment to, together with our clients, phase out coal sector financing by 2028, and continue to work to align our corporate lending portfolios with the climate scenarios of the Paris agreement. Furthermore, UniCredit is a leader in sustainable finance targeting a Top 5 league table position in EMEA combined Green Bonds and ESG-linked loans by 2023.
Milan 28 June 2021
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