ABN AMRO pledges greater scrutiny for emission of bonds

ABN AMRO announced it will begin to more closely examine the destination of bonds from public emissions in which it participates.

In a letter to the Brazilian NGO Amigos da Terra, the Dutch bank and financial services company ABN AMRO announced this week that it will begin to more closely examine the destination of bonds from public emissions in which it participates. The decision came as a result of the bank’s experience with Tractabel Energy, a Belgian company involved in the construction of the Cana Brava hydroelectric dam in central Brazil. According to environmentalists, Tractabel initiated an early public emission of bonds, coordinated by ABN AMRO, in order to pre-pay a debt owed to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Tractabel hoped to forego the IDB loan because it believed that the IDB’s estimation of the number of families affected by the project and, thus, the amount of compensation that it needed to pay was too high. Although ABN AMRO did not terminate its relation with Tractabel, this move is seen as a positive development for introducing more transparency and corporate social responsibility into the financial sector. Tractabel is also currently involved in an OECD Guidelines case concerning its activities in a hydroelectric dam project in Laos.

Read the full article (in Portuguese) on the Amigos da Terra website(opens in new window) .