Amundi to Manage €3 Billion EU-Backed Green Bond Fund Targeting Emerging Markets

European asset manager Amundi will manage the Global Green Bond Initiative Fund, a new EU-launched vehicle targeting up to €3 billion to mobilise private capital through green bonds for climate and environmental projects in EU partner countries, with a focus on emerging markets and developing economies. The fund includes close to €1 billion in equity from multilateral development banks and development finance institutions, with the objective of attracting up to €2 billion from private investors.

The Global Green Bond Initiative Fund forms the flagship initiative of the EU's Global Gateway strategy, which aims to mobilise up to €20 billion of private capital for large-scale sustainable infrastructure projects in low and middle-income countries. The fund will act as an anchor investor in primary green bond issuances, prioritising first-time issuers including governments, local authorities and businesses, with at least 20% of investments targeting the world's least developed countries. The GGBI consortium is led by the European Investment Bank and includes development institutions from Spain, Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

The use of blended finance — combining public development capital with private investor participation — is central to the fund's design. By having multilateral development banks and DFIs absorb first-loss and junior risk, the structure aims to make emerging market green bonds accessible to institutional investors who would otherwise face prohibitive credit risk. Amundi CEO Valérie Baudson said that 'unlocking capital is critical to enabling greater participation by emerging markets in the energy transition.' The fund's focus on primary market issuances is intended to catalyse new bond supply from issuers who lack established market access.

The fund's launch comes at a time when emerging market green bond issuance has lagged well behind the scale of financing needed for climate transition. For India and other large developing economies, the initiative represents a potential pathway to attract institutional capital into domestic green infrastructure at lower cost than purely commercial issuance. The GGBI is expected to demonstrate that sovereign and sub-sovereign borrowers in developing nations can access international capital markets at viable terms when backed by a credible multilateral risk-sharing framework.

Key figure — €3 billion target fund size