Yesterday, just two days before its Annual General Meeting, Natixis made new commitments on coal and shale oil & gas. Reclaim Finance welcomes the steps on coal but deplores the lack of ambition with oil & gas. If the bank gets out of coal, the measures announced on shale oil & gas suggest a withdrawal from the riskiest activities but the continuous support for the more profitable ones. On coal: Natixis goes much further than BNP Paribas and Société Générale, who will be holding their Annual General…

The Investor Alliance for Human Rights has published a new Investor Toolkit on Human Rights for asset owners and managers to address risks to people posed by their investments. This comes in the midst of the current international COVID-19 crisis, where systemic economic and social inequalities across societies have been laid bare and exacerbated, and the precarious foundation that financial markets rely upon is evident now more than ever. In this context, institutional investors of all sizes have a responsibility as well as an opportunity to…

Today, at the bank’s virtual annual shareholder meeting, JPMorgan Chase, the world’s worst funder of climate change, faced multiple questions on climate change as well as pressure to remove climate change denier and former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond from its board. 49.6% of shareholders voted to require Chase to produce a plan to align its business with the goals of the Paris Agreement. And, in a strong rebuke to Jamie Dimon’s leadership, 41.7% voted to split the roles of board chair and CEO. Reactions to the votes at Tuesday’s…

Japan’s largest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), released a revised Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) financing policy today, but fell short of its global and domestic peers –– most notably Mizuho Financial Group (Mizuho) and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMBC Group). Rainforest Action Network (RAN), which has been calling out MUFG for years over its financing of destructive palm oil operations and global fossil fuel expansion, denounced the policy revision: “Amid the current deforestation-linked…

BankTrack today releases its Annual Report over 2019, detailing how we worked towards our mission to stop banks from financing harmful business activities, promote a banking sector that respects human rights and contributes to just societies and a healthy planet, and to support others in civil society who share these aims.  At the time of writing, 2019 seems a world away. With the world currently in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, it is hard to reconstruct our activities of 2019 without our view being coloured by what came next.…

After years of hemming and hawing, BNP Paribas has specified its phase-out requirement for the coal power sector (1). Specific provisions in the updated policy include extending the 2030 coal phase-out deadline to OECD countries outside the EU and excluding coal plant developers. Not included are measures to exclude and exit other sectors of the broader coal industry, such as extraction and transport, or strict exclusion criteria of existing clients highly exposed to coal.  Reclaim Finance, BankTrack and Friends of the Earth France conclude…