May 30, 2025
When we envisioned the CIF Capital Markets Mechanism (CCMM), we wanted more than new and sustainable sources of finance. We also wanted to reshape how public entities tap into private sector funding through the global financial system.
CIF’s Clean Technology Fund (CTF) has already proven its value and it’s track record with more than $5.3 billion in approved funding that is expected to unlock an additional $64 billion through concessional finance. CCMM was premised on using the strength of CTF’s balance sheet to issue fixed term securities on the open market.
CCMM required a "village of lawyers"
But unlocking private capital at scale required the bold yet complex leap of turning CTF, a public sector fund, into a credible, market-facing entity with “legal personality”. This meant modifying its legal profile to operate independently, own assets, enter contracts, and limit owners' liability to ensure business continuity.
“There was no legal personality, no balance sheet, and no precedent,” says Shirmila Ramasamy, Senior Counsel at the World Bank. “We had to build the vehicle from scratch and retrofit global finance systems around it.”
That meant designing a market-accepted issuer where none existed. To make it happen, it took a syndicate of players: lawyers, six multilateral development banks (MDBs), World Bank Treasury officials, market insiders and, of course, a committed CIF team to make it happen. At its core was a powerful yet novel legal arrangement: a pass-through structure that tied the issuer, an “orphan English PLC” that was a legally separate United Kingdom-based company created specifically to issue the bond. A single contractual mechanism now allowed bondholders to access revenues.
Watch Shirmila Ramasamy reflect on why it took a “village of lawyers” to manage the complexity CCMM’s legal identity
The complexity of CCMM's external positioning
To support this transformation, the World Bank, serving as trustee, approved an expanded internal governance framework to manage more complex financial operations. It also took on a new role as treasury manager for CCMM, helping to oversee bond-related transactions. At the same time, liquidity and capital adequacy policies were redesigned to meet global market standards, ensuring that CCMM could function credibly and efficiently as a bond issuer.
Yet even with internal systems aligned, external acceptance remained uncertain.
“Positioning CCMM in the market was a challenge,” says Fei Wang, Senior Financial Officer, Market Solutions and Structured Finance, World Bank Treasury. “We had to explain that this wasn’t a traditional securitization, it was a supranational-grade, mission-driven instrument.”
That meant not only creating a new market-facing structure but updating the rules behind the scenes.
Watch Fei Wang explain the myriad of financial processes required to create CCMM
The CIF trust fund was modified with the unanimous consent of all its governing board to allow securitization, a process that enables future repayments from CIF investments to be bundled and used to back a tradable bond. This shift marked a major evolution in how a multilateral fund could operate: moving from sovereign contributions to a more dynamic, capital markets-based model.
Where public purpose meets private capital
CCMM is what happens “when you combine public purpose with private capital”, says George Richardson, Director and Global Lead of Capital Markets, World Bank Treasury.
He sees CCMM also a model for other organizations because the lessons learned and the complexity managed in developing the mechanism. Learning from this, he says, will simplify the process for other funds wanting to tap capital markets like CIF did.
Watch George Richardson explain why CCMM is a model for other organizations looking to tap global financial markets
The efforts of CIF, the treasury team, lawyers and others, culminated in CCMM issuing its debut $500 million bond In January 2025. It was six times oversubscribed and had an orderbook of $3 billion with investor demand spanning Europe, Asia, and the Americas. It was a milestone not just for CIF, but for development finance more broadly.
“The beauty of CCMM is that it transforms potential into performance,” says Daniel Morris, CIF Clean Energy Lead. “We didn’t just design a mechanism—we created a new model for mobilizing private capital at scale.”
The information used in this article was gathered from a panel discussion on CCMM held on April 24, 2025 in Washington DC. Learn more about CCMM here.
