Morgan Stanley also abandons the climate alliance. Trump effect on ESG?
Morgan Stanley has decided to leave the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, the initiative to reduce emissions from the financial sector. Other American banks have done the same: desire not to antagonize Trump and the Republicans?
The US investment bank Morgan Stanley announced today that it has left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a grouping of credit institutions committed to climate action and net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The initiative is promoted by the United Nations.
NOT JUST MORGAN STANLEY: BANK OF AMERICA AND CITIGROUP ALSO LEAVE THE NET-ZERO ALLIANCE
Morgan Stanley is not the only US bank to have left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance: just a few days ago Citigroup and Bank of America also did the same, preceded by Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo, all Americans.
Morgan Stanley has specified that it will continue to disseminate data on the reduction of its emissions.
THE CAUSES OF THE WITHDRAWAL
The withdrawal of American banks from the sustainability alliance was probably influenced by the victory of Donald Trump and the Republican Party in last November's elections.
In fact, for some time now, some American states with a conservative orientation and led by Republican governors – such as Texas, Florida and Western Virginia – have launched a sort of war on so-called " woke capitalism", that is, capitalism influenced by the ideologies of far left who would pay more attention to climate goals than to earnings.
BlackRock, in particular – the largest investment management company in the world – has been accused of taking a hostile "line" towards assets linked to fossil fuels.
REPUBLICANS AGAINST CLIMATE CAPITALISM
In late November, Texas and ten other Republican-led states sued BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street for pursuing a “destructive and politicized environmental agenda” against the coal industry. The Texas attorney general had declared that his state “will not tolerate the illegal militarization of the financial industry in service of a destructive and politicized environmental agenda.”
The lawsuit insisted on the involvement of the three companies in some sustainability initiatives, such as Climate Action 100+ and Net Zero Asset Managers.
WHAT DOES MICHAEL BLOOMBERG HAVE TO DO WITH IT
The Net-Zero Banking Alliance – the one that Morgan Stanley and the other American banks have decided to abandon – coordinates with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a coalition of financial institutions created as part of the Cop26 climate conference which has the aim to accelerate the decarbonisation of the economy.
One of the presidents of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is Michael Bloomberg , the American billionaire who owns the financial services and media company of the same name. Bloomberg was mayor of New York and was part of the Republican Party until 2007. He is hostile to Donald Trump and in 2016 supported Hillary Clinton's candidacy for the presidency of the United States (the elections were however won by Trump); during the last election campaign he donated 50 million dollars to Kamala Harris, but she too was defeated by the Republican candidate.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/morgan-stanley-uscita-net-zero-banking-alliance/ on Thu, 02 Jan 2025 14:51:47 +0000.