4. Emerging Practices in Sustainable Banking

For an overview of microcredit, microfinance, and microcredit guarantee funds, see, among others, Leone and Porretta (2014) and, La Torre and Vento (2008). For information on green microfinance, see: (Forcella 2013), Allet (2014), and Allet and Hudon (2015).

At the end of 2016, EIB was the world’s largest issuer of Green Bonds with €15 billion raised.

The Green Bond Principles (GBP) have been updated in June 2017 and are voluntary process guidelines that recommend transparency and disclosure and promote integrity in the development of the Green Bond market, by clarifying the approach for issuance of a Green Bond.

On the topic of green bond funds’ performance, see, among others, Scholtens (2011), Chang et al. (2012), and Adamo et al. (2014).

Indices are a primary investment tool for investment managers and investment owners, as they provide a benchmark or point of reference for the active investment decisions (Inderst et al. 2012).

About securitization, see Greenbaum and Thakor (1987), Ashcraft and Schuermann (2008), Maddaloni and Peydró (2011), and Mazzuca (2015).

For further details about impact investing, see Vecchi et al. (2015), Rizzello et al. (2016), Weber (2016), and Vecchi et al. (2017), while for more details on impact investment funds, see Stagars (2015) and Chiappini (2017).

Many academic works tried to explore the relationship between corporate environmental performance and firm performance. In this vein, Hassel et al. (2005) show that environmental performance has a negative effect on the market value of a Swedish sample of firms. Murray et al. (2006), however, analyzed the value relevance of social and environmental reporting in UK companies, with no conclusive results. Different results are often attributed to the broad range or research methods and to the lack of common environmental performance measures (Konar and Cohen 2001; Al-Tuwaijri et al. 2004). Despite the growing number of works, mixed results have been found and the debate about the relationship between environmental performance and firm performance is still unresolved (Elsayed and Paton 2005; Lee et al. 2016; Nor et al. 2016).

The Directive 2014/95/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council (on disclosure of nonfinancial and diversity information by certain large undertakings and groups (“the Directive”)) entered into force on 6 December 2014 and amends Directive 2013/34/EU (on the annual financial statements, consolidated statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings). Companies concerned will start applying the directive as of 2018, on information relating to the 2017 financial year. The disclosure requirements for nonfinancial information apply to certain large companies with more than 500 employees, as the cost of obliging SMEs to apply them could outweigh the benefits. Companies are required to disclose relevant, useful information that is necessary to understand their development, performance, position and the impact of their activity, rather than an exhaustive, detailed report. The directive also gives companies significant flexibility to disclose relevant information in the way that they consider most useful, including in a separate report. Companies may rely on international, EU-based, or national frameworks.

The EC decided on 28 October 2016 to establish a High Level Expert Group on sustainable finance. This builds on the Commission’s goal to develop an overarching and comprehensive EU strategy on sustainable finance as part of the Capital Markets Union.

The Global Compact asks companies to embrace, support, and enact, within their sphere of influence, a set of core values in the areas of human rights, labor standards, the environment, and anticorruption. The principles are organized around four main areas: human rights (principles 1 and 2), labor standards (principles 3–6), environment (principles 7–9), and anticorruption (principle 10). The principles are as follows: Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; Principle 2: Make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses; Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; Principle 4: The elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labor; Principle 5: The effective abolition of child labor; Principle 6: The elimination of discrimination in respect to employment and occupation; Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges; Principle 8: Undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies; Principle 10: Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.