The current context of environmental and social crisis, explained by the World Economic Forum, which identified that of the ten greatest risks for humanity in the next ten years, eight are environmental or social, demands urgent and large-scale actions to enable a transition of socioeconomic systems to a state of less en-vironmental degradation and greater social inclusion. An essential aspect to make this transition possible is the creation of financial instruments capable of mobilizing capital for assets that represent socio-environmental additionality, such as sustain-ability-linked bonds, which have the highest growth rate among labeled bonds (GSSS+ bonds). These bonds represent opportunities for companies that have al-ready reached maturity in the sustainability agenda to access differentiated benefits compared to normal issuances. This work seeks to analyze the characteristics of sustainability-linked bond operations involving Brazilian companies, based on a broad analysis of twenty-nine issues and two emblematic case studies, one that had a positive repercussion and the other a negative one. The objective was to under-stand the relationship that access to this type of differentiated instrument has with the degree of maturity of the sustainability strategy. It also seeks to assess the risks and controversies inherent to these operations. The study identified that the issuance of SLBs occurs mostly by companies that have already started in the sustainability agenda, where companies with less maturity are more vulnerable to controversies, on the other hand, they present a more expressive evolution in their practices than those more mature, who are less vulnerable to risk in their operations.