3 July 2024, London: ELFA has updated its ESG Fact Sheets to enhance ESG disclosure and foster engagement between
borrowers and lenders in the European leveraged finance market across all sectors. Updates are undertaken annually with the
input of credit analysts, corporate borrowers and ESG specialists.
This year, the ESG Fact Sheets are Excel-based and incorporate additional questions on the EU Taxonomy, Corporate
Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), and biodiversity and deforestation. ELFA would like to express gratitude to
climate scientists from the University of Oxford, whose input has been integrated to ensure that the ESG Fact Sheets are
suitably aspirational.
The series now also includes an ESG Fact Sheet on the Education sector. The Education ESG Fact Sheet is the result of ELFA’s
seventh ESG Workshop, bringing together sub-investment grade corporate borrowers, investors, and a credit rating agency
to delve into the relevant ESG topics arising in the education sector.
Key findings from the Education ESG Workshop included: the strong focus on mental health support for students, gender
based violence prevention policies and practices, and diversity and inclusion initiatives. The discussion also included data
security concerns, particularly managing student information and privacy, and compliance challenges with the CSRD and
European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). Despite the challenges, borrowers underscored the significant
reputational risks of failing to comply with the CSRD, highlighting its compliance as paramount. To read and download our
updated ESG Fact Sheets please visit our resource library here.
Sabrina Fox, ELFA’s Chief Executive Officer, commented: “ELFA’s ESG Fact Sheets remain the go-to ESG disclosure and
engagement resource for European leveraged finance borrowers. As such, we continue our annual updates to ensure that
they remain responsive to lender needs whilst also reflecting borrower input and commentary from the wider market,
including climate scientists from the University of Oxford. We mustn’t lose sight of the reasons behind the market’s focus on
environment, social and governance standards – by releasing this latest iteration in Excel, we have created an even more
user-friendly resource to ensure as smooth a path as possible to achieving our collective goals.”
The European Leveraged Finance Association (ELFA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Irem Sukan, Marios Halloumis and Glenn Oliver Anderson as the new Co-Chairs of the ESG Committee. Irem, Marios and Glenn will take over from Tina De Baere, Oliver Newman and Lily Baik following their decisions to step down.
The European Leveraged Finance Association (ELFA) has published a summary of industry roundtables, held in response to its recent Open Letter (“Taking Stock of Market Standards on Disclosure, Process, and Engagement in the European Leveraged Finance Market”) which highlighted persistent concerns around limited disclosure, overly compressed deal timelines, and increasingly restrictive transferability terms, all of which are undermining efficiency and resilience in Europe’s leveraged finance market.
The European Leveraged Finance Association (ELFA), in collaboration with global law firm Akin, has today published the second issue in its Transferability Series, focusing on the evolving use of whitelists in leveraged finance documentation.
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