The country’s first green bond issued by property developer, Acorn Group and PE fund Helios has attained 85 percent subscription, raising Sh4.3 billion of the targeted Sh5 billion.
Acorn CEO Edward Kirathe said raising corporate bonds in Kenya is like “walking through a hurricane,” adding that they had set a modest target of Sh2 billion for the first tranche of the medium term note.
“The current bond market is very bearish and lack of confidence with what is happening with the other bonds. It was very useful to have ( British fund) GuarantCo behind us because it gave investors comfort that this is a good bond,” he said.
“We were pleasantly surprised because we had initially expected to raise Sh2 billion now and another Sh2 billion later, and then a final Sh1 billion.”
He said that the investor mix comprised about 30 percent each for pension funds, commercial banks and development financial institutions (DFIs), while insurance firms accounted for the remainder.
