Commerzbank Signs the Green Investment Principles (GIP) for the Belt and Road Initiative

The signing extends Commerzbank’s commitment to promoting green investment along China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
33 financial institutions have signed up to the GIP to date

At a press conference in Shanghai today, Commerzbank announced its signing of the Green Investment Principles (GIP) for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The GIP, jointly developed by China’s Green Finance Committee (GFC) and the City of London Corporation‘s Green Finance Initiative (GFI), in partnership with several other international institutions including the Belt and Road Bankers Roundtable (BRBR), IFC, World Economic Forum and Paulson Institute, aims to incorporate low-carbon and sustainable development into projects in BRI countries, which represent approximately 40% of the World’s total land area and 55% of total CO2 emissions.

Commerzbank settles more than 30% of Germany’s foreign trade business and supports its corporate and institutional clients along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Nick Johnston, Regional Board Member Asia at Commerzbank, commented: “The Green Investment Principles serve as an important framework for companies and the investment community to promote green investment along the BRI. The scale of BRI calls for significant emphasis on ensuring institutions like ourselves work together to find ways to maximise the implementation of green, low-carbon and climate-resilience investment across the numerous vast and smaller projects alike.”

Dr. Ma Jun, Chairman of China Green Finance Committee said: “The Belt and Road Initiatives’ ambitious infrastructure and economic development plans need to be matched by equally ambitious sustainability commitments. Accordingly, the Green Investment Principles ensure that environmental friendliness, climate resilience, and social inclusiveness are built into new investment projects. Commerzbank is a proven leader in promoting sustainability across its business and to its clients, making its participation in the GIP extremely valuable to the initiative’s efforts to achieve its goal.”

Sustainability has been an integral part of Commerzbank’s corporate management for many years. The Bank carried out its first financing of renewable energy projects in the late 1980s and today it is one of the leading finance providers for the renewable energy sector in Germany and Europe. For more than a decade the Bank has been supporting its clients in both the preparation and placing of sustainable bonds and in October 2018 successfully issued its first own green bond. Recently Commerzbank officially reiterated its commitment to 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, as one of the founding signatories of the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Banking.

Commerzbank implements a number of initiatives and services across its business globally to promote an inclusive and sustainable economy. It supports clients with their financial ventures abroad, spanning its trade financing, M&A, Capital Market products and funding solutions. In a growing trend of Euro-dominated bond issuance from Chinese issuers, the Bank recently acted as a bookrunner for the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China’s Euro-denominated triple-tranche senior bond offering. The bond mandate was highly successful in Europe with majority of the participating investors coming from Europe.

Commerzbank has a presence in China’s onshore financial centres as well as the region’s offshore hubs. The Bank has been accompanying and financing global trade since 1870 and has been present in Asia for more than 50 years. China and Germany have long enjoyed strong trading connections, with the New Silk Road ending in the inner harbour of Duisburg in Germany, the world’s largest mainland port in the heart of industrial Germany, where many of Commerzbank’s core clients are located.

About Commerzbank

Commerzbank is a leading international commercial bank with branches and offices in nearly 50 countries. The Bank’s two business segments – Private and Small Business Customers and Corporate Clients – offer a comprehensive portfolio of financial services precisely tailored to their customers’ needs. Commerzbank transacts approximately 30% of Germany's foreign trade and is the market leader in German corporate banking. The Bank offers its sector expertise to its corporate clients in Germany and abroad and is a leading provider of capital market products. Its subsidiaries, Comdirect in Germany and mBank in Poland, are two of the world’s most innovative online banks. With approximately 800 branches going forward, Commerzbank has one of the densest branch networks in Germany. The Bank serves more than 11 million private and small business customers nationwide and over 70,000 corporate clients, multinationals, financial service providers, and institutional clients worldwide. Its Polish subsidiary mBank S.A. has around 5.6 million private and corporate customers, predominantly in Poland, but also in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In 2018 Commerzbank generated gross revenues of €8.6 billion with approximately 49,000 employees.