ESG

Beijing-headquartered China Lianhe Credit Rating (or Lianhe Ratings) is one of the market leaders in setting the criteria and standards for China’s green finance industry. As a council member of the Green Finance Committee affiliated to the People’s Bank of China, Lianhe Ratings has promoted the development of the green bond market in China.

Agricultural Bank of China wins the green innovation award for becoming the first in China to successfully issue a green credit asset-backed securitization, or ABS, product.

When it comes to an overseas presence, no Chinese rival can beat Bank of China. Since 2012, green credit financing, both onshore and offshore at the bank, has increased year by year. At the end of 2017, the bank’s green credit portfolio stood at Rmb727 billion ($113.6 billion), an increase of 11.5% year on year. The growth rate was higher than the average growth rate of the bank’s overall corporate credit balance.

The Bank of Communications was founded 110 years ago under the last imperial government specifically for the purpose of issuing bonds.

Among Chinese brokerage houses, CITIC Securities is not only the largest in the field, but also stands out as the leader of the green finance pack. The brokerage firm has a commanding share of the green bond market among brokers and has underwritten a large number of green finance projects that are directly issued by companies themselves.

Of the regional banks in China, Bank of Nanjing in the capital of Jiangsu province stands out from the crowd. The bank has lent Rmb23.7 billion ($3.7 billion) in green finance to support enterprises in their efforts to promote energy conservation, environmental protection and to reduce emissions of pollutants. Its chair is Hu Shengrong.

Yin Hong leads post-doctoral, dissertation students and talks like an academic. She is, in fact, a senior banking executive and is deputy head of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s Urban Finance Research Institute.

Industrial Bank of China is known as the bank of green finance in its homeland because it was the first to begin operating by the Equator Principles, a globally accepted risk-management framework used by financial institutions for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social risk in projects.

As a woman running one of Pakistan’s leading banks, Sima Kamil has already made her mark. But her goal is for UBL to snatch top place, elbowing aside HBL, her former employer.