NATIXIS has appointed Chaoni Huang as director of green and sustainable solutions, Asia-Pacific.

Huang joined Natixis in September 2017 with a mandate to offer issuer and investor clients in Asia-Pacific a broad spectrum of expertise in green and sustainable finance.

Based in Hong Kong, Huang reports globally to Orith Azoulay, global head of green and sustainable solutions, and locally to Raghu Narain, head of investment banking, Asia-Pacific.

Natixis says Huang will be an instrumental member of the bank’s newly-formed green & sustainable hub, a global operational hub officially launched by Natixis in September this year, which is structured around four main poles: green and sustainable research, finance structuring and origination (bond, loans, securitization), investment solution structuring (equities, fixed income and credit), as well as advisory.

Prior to joining Natixis, Huang was the head of business development, Asia at S&P Trucost, and before that was a senior ESG investment analyst at MSCI in London and Beijing. She started her career as a project manager at the UNEP Finance Initiative in Geneva, with a focus on engaging with the Chinese financial community on sustainable finance and investment issues.

Huang sits as an executive board member of Shanghai Lujiazui Green Finance Centre and China Carbon Forum, and as a guest researcher for the China Economy and Sustainable Development Centre at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Huang contributed to the drafting of the green finance policy recommendations in the early days of PBoC’s Green Finance Committee (GFC) and has continued to actively participate in the shaping of China’s green finance framework since 2015. She is also a regular public speaker on environmental matters in Asia.

Huang’s appointment will further strengthen the bank’s already extensive green finance capabilities, and comes a few months after the bank completed a series of significant transactions in the region, including the China Three Gorge’s 650-million-euro (approx. US$765 million) green bond issuance in May, DBS’s US$500 million green bond issuance in July, and, more recently, Mizuho’s 500-million-euro green bond issuance. In all three transactions, Natixis acted as joint bookrunner.

Alain Gallois, CEO of Natixis Asia-Pacific, comments: “We could not be more thrilled with Chaoni’s appointment. Chaoni brings along an intimate understanding of the green finance market in the region, and, as such, will be instrumental in increasing the footprint of our green and sustainable financing franchise. Her appointment comes amid an increasing appetite from issuers and investors for ESG-oriented solutions. Asia is a patchwork of different markets, each at varying stages of development, but the region is catching up fast, with the potential to leapfrog Europe and the US over the next few years.”