We’ve just spent the morning at the annual shareholder meetings of 3 of the 4 largest funders of fossil fuels in the world: Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.
We’re still waiting for the final votes at Wells Fargo, but, the votes on most of our priority resolutions have been disappointing:
31% of investors urged Citi to do more to protect Indigenous rights
28.5% called on Bank of America to publish clear plans to achieve their existing 2030 climate targets
11.5% demanded that Bank of America stop greenwashing and set 2030 climate targets, using an absolute emissions metric, not the weaker “intensity-only” metric
Unfortunately, support for the fossil fuel phase-out resolutions declined from last year, down to 10% at Citi and 7% at Bank of America. It’s clear that bank management was successful in convincing many investors that they don’t need to stop funding new coal, oil, and gas.
One of the most egregious things that happened at the meetings was that―in a question about Arctic drilling―Citi CEO Jane Fraser stated that the bank committing to end project-level financing is sufficient. This is greenwashing at its worst. Only 4% of bank financing for fossil fuels comes through direct project-level loans. 96% of it comes from what are called general corporate loans.
Here’s how it works. Sometimes banks will provide a loan to a company for a specific project, such as constructing a massive new oil pipeline. The company can then only use that loan for that project. This is called “project-level financing”. But most of the time, bank loans don’t come attached to a specific project. They instead come in the form of “general corporate loans”, which the company can use in any way it wants.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that if you provide a fossil fuel company with a general corporate loan, it will use it to develop new fossil fuels. But the Citi CEO, Jane Fraser, is pretending to be ignorant of that fact.
Today’s vote results are a powerful reminder of why we need a mass movement to hold the financial industry accountable. And whatever the final outcome of the votes at Wells Fargo, we can’t wait to keep building on yesterday’s powerful HQ actions with all of you.
In it for the long haul,
– the Stop the Money Pipeline team
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