Economics
Bank of England Starts Policing Unruly World of ESG Debt
- BOE will buy assets based on ESG criteria from Wednesday
- Some see the transparent rules as ‘template’ for ESG investors
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The Bank of England will enforce its green criteria in corporate bond purchases for the first time, establishing a blueprint for investing in a part of the credit world rife with greenwashing.
Starting Wednesday, the London-based central bank will only buy bonds with public environmental, social, and governance goals that meet its standards, and will start scorecards that grade bonds by their issuers’ levels of emissions intensity, among other metrics. It’s a marked shift for the central bank, which already buys ethical assets, but doesn’t filter them based on the firm’s credentials.