Ion Frecautan presented his research at the World Finance Conference, in Norway at the University of Agder

Ion Frecautan, 3^rd year PhD student with School of Finance participated at the World finance Conference hosted by the University of Adger in Kristiansand, Norway from August 2-4. He had the privilege to the share the results of the paper called “Is Corporate governance important for green bonds in the emerging capital markets?” coauthored with professor Irina Ivashkovskaya.

The paper examines the relationships between corporate governance mechanisms and green bond yield spreads for companies operating in emerging capital markets. The empirical analysis was undertaken on a data sample consisting of 293 green bonds issues assigned to 130 companies from 16 emerging countries. The presented results showed that CEO duality and board size influence significantly the green bonds yields spread in the analyzed markets. Additionally, it was found that the level of relationships between a country’s regulatory systems are significant especially for the common law systems that are more focused on good governance and shareholders rather than other stakeholders.

The discussant of the paper was Mr. Yu-Chun Wang from the Ming Chuan University (Taiwan) who provided valuable ideas to the research that certainly will bring additional value to its academic contribution.

The World finance Conference aims to bring together researchers, PhD students and Professors from academia and practitioners from all over the word from the area of finance (e.g. International Monetary Fund, European Investment Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Banco Central Brasil etc.). At the current conference edition, the central discussion topic coming from both academia and practitioners was the exploration of sustainable finance and its role in the transition to a new model of the global economy.

Among the discussed papers on sustainable finance and ESG it is worth mentioning the most remarkable ones: a paper belonging of Professor Rajna Nicole Gibson Brandon from University of Geneva and her team, with the title “The Economics of Sustainable Linked bonds” which presented a different perspective of measuring the performance of sustainable/green bonds. Also, it’s good to mention the research project entitled ” Banks, Bankers and Climate“ managed by Professor Steven Ongena from University of Zurich and Swiss Finance Institute. In their research he showed the importance of ESG disclosure and reporting made by companies and used by bankers to approve financing through loans.