When Georgia Capital was looking to raise a corporate bond late last year for one of its portfolio companies, Georgia Global Utilities (GGU), its first and only call was to J.P. Morgan. The senior management of Georgia Capital, a holding company that invests in developing businesses across sectors in Georgia, has been a client for over a decade. J.P. Morgan has also maintained its market-leading position in Georgia, leading all 18 international bond transactions from the emerging economy since 2008

Following a global “Zoom roadshow” targeting institutional investors across EMEA, the U.S. and Asia Pacific, the deal closed on July 30, with J.P. Morgan sole lead-managing GGU’s $250m 5NC2-year green bond offering, with a yield of 7.75%.

“While it was a relatively small credit for the international capital markets, we have a strong relationship with Georgia Capital’s leadership team after years of executing a number of fixed income transactions, and we wanted to make this work for them,” says Ahmet Berkmen, Debt Capital Markets (DCM), Emerging Markets – EMEA. “Since their portfolio includes renewable energy and water utility companies, we believed that leaning into both the green and development finance angles would be the right strategy to broaden investor reach.”

GGU is a water utility owned by Georgia Capital, and it is a regulated monopoly in the capital city of Tbilisi and the surrounding area. GGU provides water and wastewater services to 1.4 million residents—more than one-third of Georgia’s population—and also operates hydro power plants that provide a total capacity of 149 megawatts of renewable energy to its customers.

To prepare GGU for its international capital markets debut, the DCM team advised Georgia Capital to combine its renewable energy and water utilities to help create a business of scale for international investors. Following the restructuring, J.P. Morgan helped GGU obtain its first-time credit ratings from Fitch and S&P. From there, the green bond qualification process took approximately one month, with J.P. Morgan working closely with Sustainalytics, which provides ESG research and ratings to investors.

Though execution was underway, Stefan Weiler, DCM, Emerging Markets – EMEA, introduced J.P. Morgan’s new Development Finance Institution (DFI) to the transaction. “After hearing the DFI speak at our team’s offsite, we immediately understood the significant value it could bring and were excited to form a new partnership,” says Weiler.