Country: United Kingdom

New financial analysis reveals how one of Barclays’ darling clients, Adani Green Energy, is reportedly involved in yet another fraud scandal, and the bank’s financing could have helped them get there. 

Last month, headlines across the UK ran that Barclays was ending funding for new oil and gas, with the Telegraph notching this up as a ‘victory for net-zero activists’.

What’s the breaking news?

The Adani Group is the world’s biggest private coal developer. It loves piling billions into coal (the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel), corruption, fraud, and money laundering.

It’s not just activists who are taking aim at Barclays over its funding of massive fossil fuel companies destroying lives and wrecking the planet.

Today, celebrities including Emma Thompson, Vanessa Nakate, Mary Portas, and Lolly Adefope, as well as organisations like Greenpeace UK, are saying they have #ZeroLoveForBarclays.

As this story is evolving, Barclays staff are confidentially sharing their opinions on Barclay’s continued support of Adani. Just email confidential@bankonourfuture.org or send a signal message to +447818822876 to speak directly to the team.

An explosive investigation, led by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on the front page of the Times Business section revealed last week that HSBC lent a huge amount of money to a German utility company that is currently *expanding* one of its coal mines, shortly after HSBC pledged not to fund coal expansion.

The National Trust, a big customer of Barclays, has agreed to put pressure on the bank to reduce its fossil fuel funding, following unprecedented support by tens of thousands of National Trust members at their annual general meeting last week.

HSBC lends billions of dollars to fossil fuel companies, every year. And it’s creating a headache of their own making.

Last week, HSBC was caught out by the UK ads regulator for greenwashing, and forced to come clean about its cosy relationship with the world’s worst fossil fuel companies.

This is huge. HSBC is the first bank in the world to be found guilty of greenwashing by an advertising regulator. And it’s all over the headlines: FT, Bloomberg, WSJ, Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Daily Mail, BBC and more.

There’s no doubt, the National Trust cares for “nature, beauty and history” across the UK and Europe. But their work is being undone by their bank, Barclays.

Barclays is secretly piling BILLIONS of dollars into fossil fuel companies.

The CEOs of Barclays and HSBC were talking at a sustainability event in the heart of London. They were there to talk about how they’re going to reach net zero by 2050, and why they’re solving the climate crisis.

HSBC had a really tough day on AGM Friday. And it’s because of people and campaigners around the UK landed two big blows.

🤫 PS.

The new climate proposals released by Barclays are completely contradictory. On one hand they’re committing to Net Zero by 2050. On the other hand, their new proposals allow them to keep investing in NEW fossil fuels.

An incredible win for campaigners at ShareAction. Through organising shareholders, ShareAction are making HSBC commit to:

✅  Update its coal, oil, and gas policies again before the end of the year.

The people of Ukraine are being subjected to a brutal and illegal invasion perpetrated by the Russian military. And Putin is paying for it using all the profits he’s making from Russia’s biggest fossil fuel companies.

For months HSBC has been telling us to hold 22 February in our diaries. This is the date it was planning to publish its targets for reducing the billions of dollars it is pouring into oil and gas companies, who are fuelling the climate crisis.

Big banks being exposed…again. A new report from ShareAction shows that HSBC comes at the top of the ranking for investments in oil and gas expansion.

The pressure is working. A campaign led by ShareAction is forcing HSBC to phase out coal. It’s not perfect given the urgency of the crisis and there’s a way to go.

This is huge. Some of the biggest banks and oil companies in the world are backing the Cambo oil field which is set to extract 170 million barrels of oil over 25 years, and 53.5 billion cubic feet of gas.

The UK government keep saying they want to lead the way on climate change. And yet here they are, handing over £14bn in tax-payer’s money in tax -breaks to massive oil and gas companies.

The IPCC report has just declared code red for humanity. And a UNICEF report declared over a billion children at extreme risk face a deadly combination of exposure to multiple climate and environmental shocks, UNICEF called the situation “unimaginably dire”.

RBS also pledged to fully phase out coal financing by 2030 and is aiming to “at least halve” the climate impact of its lending activity by the end of the decade.

So with days to go, 16 organisations came together to send a strong message to Alison Rose in the Scottish Herald and to ramp up the pressure to ensure the policy was as good as possible.