Guest Lecture by Artur Kaitmazov (CBonds Company): The ESG Bond Market and the Impact of Ratings on Profitability

On May 19, Artur Kaitmazov, a leading specialist of the department of international debt markets of the financial information agency Cbonds, gave a guest lecture.

The lecture was conducted as part of the course "Sustainable Finance" (lecturer O.V. Makarova).The speaker is a graduate of the Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Faculty of Economics of St. Petersburg State University. Since the end of 2022, he has been working at Cbonds, where he analyses and maintains data on debt markets in developed countries, including bonds, ETFs, indices and macroeconomic indicators.

 

Key lecture topics:

• What is ESG? Companies operate in accordance with the principles of sustainable development – environmental responsibility, social policy and corporate governance.
• The types of ESG bonds are green, social, Sustainable, Blue, Transitional, and climatic. The speaker cited historical examples: the first green bonds were issued by the EIB in 2007, the first blue ones were issued by Seychelles in 2018, and the first transitional ones in Russia were issued by INC–Capital JSC in 2021.
• Market structure: green bonds occupy the largest share among all GSS+ instruments. Over the period 2019-2025, more flexible instruments were actively growing, in particular, Sustainability–Linked Bonds, whose share increased from ~4% to ~27%.
• Regional differences: the share of sustainable bonds in the total volume of corporate issues varies greatly. In the European Union, ESG instruments account for 5-10% of the total bond issue by the end of 2025.
• The ESG market in Russia: As of 2025, it shows moderate but unstable growth after the 2022 recession. The share is only 2-4% of the total bond market. The largest issuer is VEB.RF. The prospects are related to government programs, infrastructure projects and the growing role of transitional bonds in energy and industry.
• The impact of ESG on profitability: As a rule, the yield on ESG bonds is lower than on comparable securities without sustainable goals. This is due to increased demand from institutional investors, reduced default risk, and regulatory requirements. The phenomenon of the "green premium" means that investors are willing to accept lower returns for the sake of a positive impact on the environment and society.
• As a good example, the speaker cited bond XS2539440722 (issued by Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) with a coupon of 30%, a price of 88.6% and an effective yield to maturity of 41% (in Turkish lira).

 

The lecture aroused great interest among the students: not only the theoretical foundations of sustainable financing were considered, but also real data, regional specifics and practical examples from the international Cbonds database. Artur Kaitmazov emphasised that the profitability of ESG bonds depends not only on the rating, but also on the issuer's reputation, maturity and many external factors, however, the general trend towards reducing the profitability and risk of such instruments remains.

 

We would like to thank the guest for his informative lecture and up-to-date information on the development of the ESG bond market in the world and Russia.