The European Commission’s ESG commitments for banks and BlackRock: It’s about more than a conflict of interest

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BlackRock Zentrale in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. | Bild (Ausschnitt): © Americasroof [CC BY-SA 3.0] - Wikipedia

In early 2020, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest and arguably most renowned asset management company, wrote in a letter to CEOs that “every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change”. Not because it is morally important to do so, but because it is financially savvy. Indeed, “our [BlackRock’s] investment conviction is that sustainability- and climate-integrated portfolios can provide better risk-adjusted returns to investors”.   ... →

Occupied, annexed and cashed up

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Bild (Ausschnitt): © REUTERS / Ammar Awad.

How international companies and German financial institutions benefit from and support activities contrary to international law in occupied and annexed territories

  • German banks maintain financial relations with companies operating in occupied and annexed territories in the amount of € 44 billion.
  • Companies and banks neglect their human rights responsibilities and run the risk of participating in and benefiting from illegal settlement activities, from the destruction of infrastructure or from the exploitation of resources in occupied and annexed territories.
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Cargill: Sustainability leader or worst company in the world?

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Open burning in a newly cleared rainforest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, where Cargill is operating two undisclosed palm oil plantations. | Bild (Ausschnitt): © David Gilbert/RAN 2009 (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Cargill is one of the world’s largest agricultural commodity trader and food processor and United States’ largest privately-owned company, with revenues exceeding $114 billion in 2018. The company dominates the global industrial agricultural system, a system which seeks to convert vast areas of land into industrial and chemically dependent scale monocultures to produce cheap meat, palm oil and chocolate.   ... →

Strong call from OSCE countries to support the negotiations to ban lethal autonomous weapons

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On 8 July 2019, Parliamentarians from the 57 participating States of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have adopted the Declaration on Advancing Sustainable Development to Promote Security (Luxembourg Declaration) negotiated during their annual Parliamentary Assembly in Luxembourg. This Declaration contains some very encouraging paragraphs, in particular the one on killer robots that was submitted by Katja Keul (Germany’s Green Member of Parliament ) with the support of other Members of Parliament from Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland:

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly:

29.   ... →

AGM 2019: Deutsche Bank CEO “we have cleaned up the Deutsche Bank”.

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On the 23rd May 2019 Banktrack, Urgewald and Facing Finance, partners in the Fossil Banks-No Thanks campaign, attended the Deutsche Bank AGM under the slogan : “No War- No Warming” To protest Deutsche Bank’s financing of oil and gas, as well as the provision of finance to arms companies exporting to controversial countries (as shown in the Dirty profits 7 report).   ... →

Press Release: As-Salaam-Alaikum (Peace be with you): How the war in Yemen is filling the coffers of European banks.

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Bild (Ausschnitt): © n.v.

(22.5.2019) The DIRTY Profits 7 report presented today in Frankfurt / Main by the NGO Facing Finance highlights the ten European banks with some of the highest investments in 11 global arms companies, companies that have since 2015 been exporting to unstable/crisis-affected countries in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) and countries involved in the war in Yemen.   ... →