On Friday 10th February 2017 Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB) successfully issued its inaugural EUR 500m (no grow) 5yr Green Bond. On the transaction SEB acted as Sole Structuring Advisor and Joint Lead Manager together with ABN AMRO and HSBC. The Green Bond was priced at a spread of MS+20bps off an order book in excess of EUR 2.1bn.
The mandate announcement was released on Wednesday 1st of February and on the following week between the 6th to 9th of February a roadshow was arranged where the issuer met with numerous investors in Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Stockholm and London as well as hosting a global investor call for investors unable to attend the roadshow.
The final order book was very granular with broad participation across Europe. Investors from Germany and Austria (26%) took the largest share of the book, followed by investors from Benelux (20%), Nordics (19%), France (19%), UK/Ireland (10%), Switzerland (3%) and other geographic regions (3%).
In terms of investor segments, 45% of the transaction was placed with asset managers, followed by 35% to pension/insurance funds and 20% to banks.