ESG채권을 통한 자금조달 현황과 관련법제 및 책임투자 검토

Abstract

Recently, under the economic recession due to the Coronavirus disease 19, the issuance of the ESG(Environment, Social & Governance) bond comes into the spotlight as a sound and sustainable way of fundraising to companies. Regarding the advantages of issuing the ESG bond, firstly a company can issue the bond at lower interest rates than in case of issuing other bonds, and then issuing it may enhance the company's reputation in the area of environment, social responsibility or governance. The total amount of issuing the ESG bonds in the world reaches more than 460 billion dollars, while the amount in Korea on the beginning stage reaches less than 25 billion dollars. As the topics discussed in this writing, there are the market situation of the issuance and circulation of the ESG bond, the investment situations of institutional investors, relevant regulations, disclosure issues, unfair trading issues, comparison with foreign legal systems, the relationship between the social responsible investment principle and the fiduciary duty which the pension fund as institutional investor has, and the stewardship code applicable for the pension fund as institutional investor as a soft law. Consequently, in order to promote the issuance of the ESG bond in Korea, firstly I would like to suggest the reinforcement of the disclosure system including the introduction of the Taxonomy or the Green Finance Labelling, which can be used to categorize clearly the ESG bond and be useful for preventing the legal abuse such as false description or unfair trading. Also governmental supports like subsidy or tax cut might be helpful for companies issuing the ESG bond. In addition I insist on making legal conditions for institutional investors like pension funds more friendly towards the investment activities on the basis of the ESG criteria by strengthening the social responsible investment principle in harmony with the fiduciary duty and revising the Stewardship Code.