Sustainable Finance

The concept of growth at any price no longer holds water, with companies able to combine commercial success and a sustainable business model now the example for others to emulate. This is not just about public relations either: smart businesses understand that in the current era, profitability and sustainability are two sides of the same coin. Organisations that have still not managed to integrate sustainability into their strategy properly in 2021 are gambling with their very future: like a washing machine with a miserable efficiency rating, their prospects grow dimmer by the moment.

Policymakers are responding with new regulations – like the European Green Deal, which aims to make the EU climate neutral by 2050, and the EU taxonomy, which defines the criteria that characterise sustainable investment – that make sustainable operation effectively unavoidable.

Sustainability is not a flash in the pan, some momentary bubble of hype or passing fancy; sustainability is the core economic strategy for the future. This applies to companies of all sectors too even if their business model has no obvious connection with sustainability. Companies in certain sectors, such as the mechanical engineering, mobility, chemical and metal industries, do though undoubtedly have more scope to make an impact with sustainable strategies.

The tone is very much "We expect..." rather than "Would you mind..." The combination of this clear message and the regulations formally adopted at the political level makes sustainability a key issue for the financial sector. Banks that already have a sustainable approach hard-wired into their ethos possess a distinct advantage here. Helaba, which is organised under public law and thus committed to act in the public interest, is just such an institution: all our customer relationships have sustainability at their heart, so we are ideally positioned for the era of sustainable finance.

An expert in international structured and plain vanilla financing arrangements in the form of bonds and promissory notes, Klaus Distler has over 30 years of banking experience. He moved to Helaba, where he is now responsible for Corporate DCM, in 2012 having previously been in charge of Financial Institutions Origination at WestLB and held leading positions at JP Morgan in London and BayernLB in Munich.

Ina Liermann has been structuring solutions for listed and family-owned companies seeking external finance with syndicated loans for years. Having first joined Helaba in 2001 to take up a position in the acquisition finance field, the business administration graduate has a sharp eye for specific customer needs and develops borrowing options to match – options in which sustainability plays an ever more central role.