Royal Philips (Philips), a leader in health technology, has announced an agreement with a consortium of sixteen banks for a new €1 billion Revolving Credit Facility with an interest rate that will be dependent on the company’s year-on-year sustainability performance improvement.
A revolving loan facility is a financial institution and flexible financing tool that allows the borrower obtain a personal loan where the borrow has the flexibility to draw down, repay and redraw loans advanced to it. The facility was created by Philips in collaboration with ING acting as the sustainability coordinator and supported by the banks in the consortium, which include ABN AMRO, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, ICBC, ING, JPMorgan, Mizuho Bank, Morgan Stanley, MUFG, Rabobank, Société Générale and UBS.
“This agreement with Philips is an additional way for us to support, motivate and reward our clients in their aim to become even more sustainable,” said Leonie Schreve, head of sustainable finance at ING. “We believe that companies that deliver on sustainability today are the winners of tomorrow, that’s why sustainability is a part of every conversation we have with clients.”
“Creating sustainability incentives in a financing structure is a mind-shift in corporate financing and a clear innovation in the market,” said Gerro Goedhuis, of ING syndicated finance.
Phillip’s current sustainability performance has been assessed by Sustainalytics, an independent global provider of environmental, social and governance research and ratings to investors. The resulting score will be used as the benchmark against which performance improvements will be assessed.
“I am pleased that following the launch of our ambitious ‘Healthy people, sustainable planet’ program last year, we are now able to link the interest rate structure of our new Revolving Credit Facility to our sustainability performance,” said Abhijit Bhattacharya, CFO of Royal Philips. “This underlines our commitment to sustainability as an integral part of how we do business.”
As part of its five-year sustainability program, Philips has committed to becoming carbon neutral in its operations, to grow its ‘green revenues’ to 70 percent of sales and to have 15 percent of its revenues generated through circular economy-driven propositions by 2020.
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Published Apr 24, 2017 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST