Month: July 2025

Lloyds supports Tideway’s £250m blue bond – a UK first in sterling corporate issuance

Stuart Mitchell

Lloyds has acted as Global Coordinator on the successful issuance of a £250 million 8-year Blue Bond for Tideway (Bazalgette Finance Plc), marking a milestone in the evolution of sustainable finance with this being the first-ever Blue Bond issued by a UK corporate in sterling. Tideway was established to design, build, commission and maintain the Thames Tideway Tunnel. A critical infrastructure project developed to intercept millions of tonnes of raw sewage that would otherwise pollute the River Thames. With construction now complete and the project entering its next phase, the…

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Black-owned businesses make their TV debut thanks to Channel 4’s Black in Business Initiative with Lloyds

Stuart Mitchell

Four SME Black-owned businesses will today debut TV advertising for the first time, after winning the latest edition of Channel 4 Sales’ Black in Business initiative with Lloyds.  Open to Black entrepreneurs, the initiative saw the four winners emerge from an application process and a shortlist of 20 outstanding businesses. Each winner receives £150,000 worth of free advertising airtime on Channel 4, alongside six months of mentoring guidance from senior executive sponsors at Channel 4 and Lloyds, plus the creation of their own advert. The adverts will premiere together this…

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New CATF analysis reveals energy poverty metrics fail to capture true costs for African households

Stuart Mitchell

A new paper from Clean Air Task Force (CATF), also published in Energy Economics, reveals that standard methods of measuring energy poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa significantly understate the true burden faced by households by failing to account for the high costs of coping with unreliable electricity – using Benin as a case study to illustrate these broader regional dynamics.   “These hidden costs are crushing families’ budgets,” said Prudence Dato, Lead Energy Economist at CATF. “Millions of people who appear to be out of energy poverty based on their electricity bills are,…

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Record-breaking Green Climate Fund Board meeting approves USD 1.225 billion for new projects, reforms accreditation model and invites bids to host regional presence

Stuart Mitchell

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board recently approved a record volume of climate finance for developing countries, green-lighting 17 new projects for climate action around the world. The USD 1.225 billion total is the largest amount approved at a single Board meeting, during a year in which the Fund is scaling up its activities in response to the global demands for climate finance. GCF now has a portfolio of 314 projects amounting to USD 18 billion in GCF resources, USD 67 billion including co-financing.  The projects will bring urgently needed…

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Greenpeace and elvis assemble high profile activists for nationwide billboard protest

Stuart Mitchell

‘They can’t arrest this billboard’ harnesses “safety” of OOH spaces to call for restoration of the public’s democratic right to protest The right to protest powers democracy. It’s behind many of the biggest leaps forward society has seen. In recent years however, people’s freedom to join peaceful demonstrations has been quietly eroded. New research published on 3rd July by Greenpeace shows an almost ten-fold rise in the number of arrests in London for conspiracy to cause public nuisance since 2019, but out of more than 600 arrests made, only 18…

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