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The United Kingdom has long been a frontrunner in green finance, establishing programs like the Green Finance Institute to promote corporate engagement in sustainable initiatives. The Green Finance Strategy, enacted in 2019, aligns UK financial procedures with international standards, including the EU taxonomy for sustainable Activities. The study examined how sustainable finance enhances the corporate reputation of the firms listed on the London Stock Exchange. A purposive sampling yielded 17 years of data from 143 non-financial companies from the Thomson Reuters Eikon DataStream between 2007 and 2023. In dealing with the issue of endogeneity and auto-serial correlation, the Generalized Methods of Movement (GMM) was employed to provide reliable and unbiased estimation results. The study revealed a positive impact of green bond issues, environmental expenditures, and policies for emission reduction on corporate reputation. The moderating relationship between green bond issues, environmental expenditures, and board diversity revealed a positive and significant relationship with corporate reputation. Managers should ensure that their endorsed activities gain public recognition and align with sustainability goals, particularly by emphasizing the issuance of green bonds in their financing strategy. They should also collaborate with environmental experts and stakeholders to ensure that the outcomes of funded projects are evaluated in line with international ESG standards.

Green bond issues and markets are growing rapidly worldwide every year. Green bonds are used for financing environmentally friendly projects. Their issue is an important event in a company, with a huge impact not only on the protection of the environment but also on the management practice and financial performance of the company. This event is a signal to a stock market that is interpreted by shareholders differently: positively for eco-friendly investors and negatively for traditional investors, as it increases additional capital expenditures and financial risk. This paper aims to assess the short-term stock market reaction to the announcement of green bond issues in Nordic public companies and to determine whether the characteristics of green bond issues and issuers are significant determinants of stock cumulative abnormal return (CAR). The total sample was composed of 197 green bonds issued during 2017–2024. Sweden had the highest number of green bond issues (60.9%). Denmark and Finland had a very similar share, with 20.3% and 18.8%, respectively. The stock market reaction was assessed by applying an event study methodology. CAR dependence on the characteristics of green bond issues and issuers was determined using a heteroskedasticity-corrected regression model. The findings revealed a negative stock market reaction to the announcement of green bond issues. Such reaction may not only be due to increased capital expenditures and financial risk but also to the shift of investments from stocks to green bonds, as the majority of green bonds were issued during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian–Ukrainian war. We highlight that CAR is more sensitive to the characteristics of green bond issuers than those of issues.

Growth remained strong in the region in 2012, with regional GDP rates increasing in most countries (excluding Nigeria and South Africa). Projections point to a moderate, broad-based acceleration in growth to around 5½ percent in 2013¬14, reflecting a gradually strengthening global economy and robust domestic demand. Investment in export-oriented sectors remains an important economic driver, and an agriculture rebound in drought-affected areas will also help growth. Uncertainties in the global economy are the main risk to the region's outlook, but plausible adverse shocks would likely not have a large effect on the region's overall performance.

The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) regional securities market saw increasing activity in the last decade, but still fell short of supplying sufficient long-term financing for growth-enhancing public and private investment projects. In addition to providing an institutional background, this paper studies recent developments and the determinants of interest rates on the market-using yield curve and principal component analyses. It also identifies challenges and prospective reforms that could help the region reap the full benefits of a more dynamic securities market and assesses the potential systemic risk the market may pose for the region's banking system.

In this paper, we developed an approach for the empirical testing of the relationship between the financing choices of companies and the abnormal returns obtained by their shareholders. We innovate by incorporating controls on how this relationship is affected by the capabilities of each funding source, at different levels of returns, through quantile regression. The estimation of the model for a sample of Brazilian companies indicates the inexistence of a significant relationship between abnormal returns and debt issuance. The same occurs between abnormal returns and equity issuance, with one exception: when there is a deficit of internal financing that extrapolates the available safe debt and the abnormal returns are, at least, median, this relationship becomes significant and positive. Considered as a whole, the results suggest an indifference to the sources of funds used by the company. Among the contributions, we highlight the incorporation of the aforementioned controls, which bridges the gap identified in the literature relating business financial flows and stock returns.

Green bonds, a rapidly emerging financial instrument designed to bolster environmentally sustainable initiatives, are subject to the influence of the national culture on economic decisions. This study examines varying levels of green bond issuance and cultural dimensions based on Hofstede’s theory. Fixed-effects regression was employed to analyze a sample of 67 countries from 2008 to 2021. The results suggest that cultural dimensions such as individualism and long-term orientation promote green bond issuance, while masculinity restrains it. Additionally, this study examines the moderating effects of institutional quality and economic conditions. The findings show that the relationship between national culture and green bonds is more significant in countries with high institutional quality and lower income levels. While this study offers valuable insights for policymakers, investors, and issuers seeking to promote sustainable finance in different cultural contexts, it could be enhanced by providing more information on the methodology and data sources used, as well as by exploring the potential mechanisms underlying the observed relationships between cultural values and green bond issuance.

Material integration strategies, such as epitaxial growth, usually involve strong chemical bonds and are typically limited to materials with strict structure matching and processing compatibility. Van der Waals integration, in which pre-fabricated building blocks are physically assembled together through weak van der Waals interactions, offers an alternative bond-free integration strategy without lattice and processing limitations, as exemplified by two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures. Here we review the development, challenges and opportunities of this emerging approach, generalizing it for flexible integration of diverse material systems beyond two dimensions, and discuss its potential for creating artificial heterostructures or superlattices beyond the reach of existing materials. Recent advances and future directions in the use of van der Waals integration beyond two-dimensional materials are reviewed.

A structural model for green bonds is developed to explain the formation and dynamics of green bond prices and to address the issue of the so-called 'greenium', that is, the difference between the yields on a conventional bond and a green bond with the same characteristics. We provide answers to the following questions: What are the determinants of the green bond value? Do green bonds enhance the credit quality of the issuer? Are green bonds a relatively cheap tool to fund sustainable investments? We also study the effect of investors' environmental concern on portfolio allocation. Our results have direct policy implications and suggest that an improvement in credit quality could ultimately lead to a lower cost of capital for green bond issuers and that governmental tax-based incentives and an increase in investors' green awareness play a significant role in scaling up the green bonds market.

Green bonds are seen as a key instrument to unlock climate finance. While their volume has grown steadily in recent years, the impact of the ‘green’ label on the bond market is poorly understood. Here, we investigate the differences between the yield term structures of green and conventional bonds in the US municipal bond market. We show that, although returns on conventional bonds are on average higher than for green bonds, the differences can largely be explained by the fundamental properties of the bonds. Historically, green bonds have been penalized on the municipal market, being traded at lower prices and higher yields than expected by their credit profiles. In recent years, however, the credit quality of municipal green bonds has increased and the premium turned positive. Green bonds are thus becoming an increasingly attractive investment, with scope to bridge the climate finance gap for mitigation and adaptation.

Using novel position and trading data for single-name corporate credit default swaps (CDSs), we provide evidence that CDS markets emerge as \"alternative trading venues\" serving a standardization and liquidity role. CDS positions and trading volume are larger for firms with bonds fragmented into many separate issues and with heterogeneous contractual terms. Whereas hedging motives are associated with trading volume in the bond and CDS markets, speculative trading concentrates in the CDS. Cross-market arbitrage links the CDS and bond market via the basis trade, compressing the negative CDS-bond basis and reducing price impact in the bond market.