Nordic Trustee’s Corporate Bond Market Report 2020

Nordic Trustee and Stamdata are proud to present the 2020 edition of the Nordic Corporate Bond Market Report. 2020 has been a challenging year in many ways, and we have throughout the year seen material movements in the capital markets. Still, the Nordic corporate bond market continues to serve as an attractive source of capital, and in 2020 the total outstanding volume reached new record levels at EUR 106bn by year end.

For the complete overview of the development in the Nordic corporate bond market, download the report here.
Selected key takeaways (development measured in EUR):
  • The Nordic corporate bond market reached new record levels, increasing its outstanding volume by 4% to EUR 106bn.
  • The development in new issue volume for the two key markets are strikingly different with a YoY 2019-2020 development of +18% and -17% in the Norwegian and Swedish market respectively.
  • Across markets, average new issue spreads in H1 2020 did not increase as one could expect based on the market volatility and material increase in yield to maturity triggered by Covid-19.
  • The first time default rate has increased substantially during 2020, from 2% in Q1’20 to 9% in Q4’20.
  • Green corporate bond volumes continued to outgrow the rest of the corporate bond market, with total outstanding volume increasing by 46% in 2020.
  • The Norwegian market tripled its corporate green bond new issue volume in 2020, and was on par with volumes in the Swedish market.

A big thank you to our subsidiary Stamdata for their contribution to the report.

Nordic Trustee

Previous reports can be downloaded here: