Obi Emetarom is an ambitious man. He wants his fintech company Appzone to be at the heart of African banking and payments with its proprietary cloud and blockchain based technology, and, after raising US$10mn in series A funding earlier this year, he is building the team to do it.

With US$10 trillion in combined assets – many of which are highly polluting – the world’s sovereign wealth funds have been accused of lagging behind the rest of their financial sector in terms of their climate change commitments. What can be done to change the status quo?

Italian energy company Enel sold a multibillion-dollar sustainability-linked bond at the start of July, as the nascent deal structure, which sees a coupon step up on missed ESG targets, continues to gain global popularity.

ESG veteran Solomon joins Equitile

Hampleton expands with Bell

The pandemic served as a catalyst for changes that were already underway, not least greater digitisation and better non-financial risk management. 

Sir Paul Collier has been working in Africa for four decades and is one of the world’s leading voices on the economies of the region. He tells EMEA Finance that, while the pandemic has ravaged the continent, there are clear signs of hope for sustainable economic growth.

The Brexit deal has posed challenges for London-based financial services firms, which look set to lose some of their EU business as a result. 

An agreement could be in sight for the southern African country, which defaulted on its sovereign debt last year. 

The mostly-manual bond sale and trading process has taken another step toward digitisation, with a new company launching to automate primary sales while a secondary credit trading firm has received a US$208mn equity investment to grow its platform. 

Top tier Turkish lender Akbank slashed the margin on its US$700mn-equivalent sustainability-linked loan refinancing, days before the Turkish central bank sent markets reeling by slashing rates by 200bp.

As Europe’s electric vehicle market gathers pace, Slovakian battery startup InoBat is expecting to scale up rapidly over the next few years.