Earlier, the SEC Management led by Secretary-General Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol had a meeting with Mr. Robert Scharle, CEO of LuxSE, and executives on 31 January 2020 to discuss and share experiences in establishing a sustainable bond data platform as well as to explore the possibility of displaying Thai sustainable bonds (Green Bond, Social Bonds and Sustainability Bonds) on LGX, a platform exclusively for green, social and sustainable securities, to allow global investors a convenient information access to such products and attract foreign investments to Thailand.

Following the meeting, SEC has studied and conducted a regulatory mapping between Thailand and Luxembourg to support Thai companies that are ready for listing overseas. The study shows that Thai debt securities issuers can apply for securities listing on any of the three exchanges of LuxSE, namely (1) Bourse de Luxembourg (BdL), whose criteria are as stringent as the regulations governing public offering of corporate bonds, (2) Euro Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF), whose criteria are as relaxed as the regulations governing an offering of corporate bonds to high net worth investors, and (3) Securities Official List (SoL), whose criteria are the most relaxed and relatively compatible to the regulations governing securities offering to institutional investors.    

“BdL and MTF support bond trading while SoL is a platform for bond profile listing whereby investors interested in trading securities must execute transactions on the Thai Bond Market. Interested and well-prepared companies may apply for listing on these exchanges to have their debt securities displayed on LGX platform, in which case translation of prospectus and opinions of legal advisors is required. This may start from listing on SoL whose criteria are relatively more relaxed, and the expenses do not cause excessive burdens on the issuers. Companies capable of complying with the regulations may choose to be listed and traded on BdL or EuroMTF directly,” said Ms. Ruenvadee.  

In this regard, SEC is ready to support and reduce burdens on interested Thai debt issuers from both the public and private sectors. For starters, SEC will publish a LuxSE listing guidelines and communicate to debt issuers, and cooperate with LuxSE in providing in-depth knowledge and answering further questions. 

LGX is the world’s first green exchange which provides comprehensive information on sustainable debt securities and mutual funds from various countries. Launched in 2016, LGX has become well recognized and successful. Currently, LGX displays more than 50 percent of listed sustainable bonds worldwide, including Asian bonds issuers from Japan, China and Hong Kong.

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