Japan Digital Bond Market Sees Largest Digital Green Bonds Sale, $68M By Hitachi

Driven by high demand, Japan witnessed its biggest digital corporate bond issuance.

What Happened: Hitachi HTHIY issued the five-year green bonds with a coupon rate of 0.598%, Bloomberg reported. Nippon Life Insurance revealed that it purchased half of the $68 million offering. The bond issuance is the second one targeting corporates after the Japan Exchange Group launched ¥500 million in digital bonds in June 2022.

Emiri Matsuo of Hitachi’s treasury division financing department said that life insurers, central public institutions, and other corporates also acquired the securities. Matsuo adds that it is likely to sell such securities again.

Read Next: French Financial Giant Leverages Ethereum For Issuing First Green Bond Worth $11M

A bank-funded blockchain platform is created for digital securities, and trading on the exchange is scheduled to commence at the end of December.

Why It Matters: Japan’s corporate debt market is seen transforming into a more innovative issuance mode in recent times as it looks to capitalize on rising demand.

Hitachi will leverage the Green Tracking Hub mechanism to improve the transparency of the environmental effect of green projects, Medium reported. It will record and manage data on energy reduced/CO2 avoided emissions, which will support carbon offsetting by business corporations.

The hub is jointly developed by Hitachi and JPXI enabling investors to smoothly view the bond’s environmental effect, and a blockchain provided by BOOSTRY.

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