Euronext, Europe’s largest Exchange , has joined the United Nations' (UN) Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative, extending a long-term approach to transparent investing opportunities, according to a Euronext statement.
The UN’s SSE initiative was designed to enhance and facilitate the relationship between exchanges and investors, together with regulatory authorities and companies across a variety of initiatives, i.e. Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) issues.
As a result, Euronext has launched or extended the trading of several new investment instruments, each designed to help promote the agenda outlined above, which underscores a symbiotic relationship between both the UN and Euronext exchange. This includes the following:
Green Bonds – an instrument where funds are raised and utilized exclusively by financially eligible Green projects across such investment channels as renewable energy, sustainable land use, and clean transportation, among others. To date, nearly €3.84 billion has been raised via a total of eleven green bond issues in 2015.
Sustainable indices – Euronext has been working with Vigeo, a European group that specializes in assessing companies and organizations’ financial practices and performance across environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.
Commodities – Euronext has also introduced a pantheon of products focusing on the real economy, and soft commodity contracts for milling wheat, rapeseed, corn, and others. Coupled with the aforementioned instruments, Euronext also recently launched a new iteration of its Low Carbon 100 Europe Index this past November.
According to Stéphane Boujnah, CEO and Chairman of the Managing Board of Euronext NV, in a recent statement on the UN initiative, “Joining the SSE initiative and partnering with the UN and our industry is another milestone in Euronext’s support for best practices in the environmental, social and governance fields, as well as for corporate social responsibility.”
“As the leading pan-European exchange, operating regulated markets in five countries in Europe, Euronext has a responsibility to create a productive dialogue between investors and issuers, and encourage issuers to communicate their efforts in corporate sustainability. We look forward to participating in the Sustainable Stock Exchanges initiative as a global forum for sharing best practices on capital markets,” Boujnah added.
Earlier this month, Euronext reported its trading volumes for the month ending November 2015. In particular, November 2015 saw the average daily Euronext cash order book at just $7,789 million, representing a fall of -4.7% MoM from October 2015. Across a yearly timeframe however, the latest figures showed a growth of 13.0% YoY from November 2014.
