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Pricing ESG risk in sovereign credit: an emerging divergence

In 2019, we partnered with research house Beyond Ratings to demonstrate a robust relationship between environmental, social and governance (ESG) scores and sovereign credit-default swap (CDS) spreads. In the second instalment of this two-part paper, we consider whether the results differ for developed and emerging markets.

Our study from last year uncovered an inverse relationship between country-level ESG scores and government CDS spreads: the countries with lower ESG scores have the widest CDS spreads, while those with the highest scores have the tightest spreads.

But do our findings hold up if we look at developed and emerging markets separately? In order to find out, we adopted the analytical techniques from our previous study and split the dataset into developed and emerging markets.

Some of the key questions our study asks include:

  • Is the relationship between ESG scores and CDS spreads more significant for developed or emerging markets?
  • Do any of the ‘E’, ‘S’ or ‘G’ sub-risks have a stronger relationship with CDS spreads?
  • How can country-level ESG factors affect credit risk in emerging markets?

To delve into our findings and to understand our underlying methodologies, read the full report.

Pricing ESG risk in sovereign credit: part II
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Michael Viehs
Head of ESG Integration

Michael Viehs joined the international business of Federated Hermes in 2015, initially as part of EOS, and transferred to the Responsibility Office in 2018. He is Head of ESG Integration for all public market equity and credit funds managed from London. As part of that role, he advises the investment and stewardship teams on their integration approach and ensures that they have incisive ESG, sustainability and engagement information at hand to make better investment and engagement decisions for all of our clients. Furthermore, he is responsible for the ESG and stewardship research activities, proving the value-add from engagement and incorporating ESG information in investment decisions. Michael continues to conduct executive- and board-level engagements on environmental, social, governance (ESG), and strategic issues with German publicly-listed corporations.

Prior to this, Michael was Research Director at University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. His work on responsible investment, corporate governance, and stewardship has been published in Corporate Governance: An International Review and Annals of Social Responsibility. Amongst others, he is co-author of the widely recognised study “From the Stockholder to the Stakeholder – How Sustainability Can Drive Financial Outperformance” and contributed a chapter on active ownership to the recently published book Re-Imagining Capitalism (Oxford University Press) edited by Dominic Barton, Dezsö Horvath, and Matthias Kipping. He has also presented his work on responsible investing at several high-profile academic and industry conferences around the world.

Michael holds a BSc, MSc and PhD from Maastricht University, School of Business and Economics.

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Mitch Reznick
CFA, Head of Research and Sustainable Fixed Income

Mitch joined the international business of Federated Hermes in February 2010 as Head of Research on the Credit team before becoming Co-Head of Credit from 2012 to 2019. In 2019, in addition to his role of Head of Research, he became Head of Sustainable Fixed Income and co-manager of the Federated Hermes SDG Engagement High Yield Credit Fund. Prior to this he was Co-Head of Credit Research for the global credit team at Fortis Investments. Other roles at Fortis include portfolio manager of European high yield funds, based in London, and senior credit analyst, based in Paris. Before this he worked as an associate analyst in the leveraged finance group at Moody’s Investors Service in New York. Mitch earned a Master’s degree in International Affairs at Columbia University in New York City and a Bachelor’s degree in History at Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges in California. He is a CFA charterholder; Co-Chair of the Capital Markets Advisory Committee of the IFRS Foundation; founding member of the Executive Committee for the European Leveraged Finance Association; member of the Sovereign Working Group and the Credit Rating Advisory Committee for the PRI; member of the technical Working Group (Communications and Technology) for the US-based Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB); a workstream member of the UK-China Green Finance Task Force; and sits on the Green Finance Advisory of the City of London.

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