Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Citigroup still has ESG analysts? That is so 2021. That said, they are correct. President Trump can’t stop something that isn’t happening. To the extent a “transition” is occurring, it’s from coal to natural gas. This is not really a transition. Both are carbon-based fossil fuels, with high energy densities; It’s more of an energy clean-up, rather than a transition.
Citigroup still has ESG analysts? That is so 2021. That said, they are correct. President Trump can’t stop something that isn’t happening. To the extent a “transition” is occurring, it’s from coal to natural gas. This is not really a transition. Both are carbon-based fossil fuels, with high energy densities; It’s more of an energy clean-up, rather than a transition.
In 1949, there was no nuclear power generation and renewables were pretty well limited to hydroelectric and wood. From 1949 through 2023 US total energy production more than tripled. To the extent fossil fuels were displaced, it was mostly by nuclear power. Despite $gazillions of subsidies, the renewables share barely budged from 6% to 8%.
The energy transition has progressed and is now more advanced compared to when President Trump entered the White House for the first time in 2017, according to the analysts.
In clear preparation for President Trump’s second term, six of America’s largest banks – Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo – have made an exodus from the leading woke climate alliance.
In clear preparation for President Trump’s second term, six of America’s largest banks – Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo – have made an exodus from the leading woke climate alliance.
The UN-sponsored Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) requires leading global banks to put climate extremism over good business by aligning their investments, lending, and capital market activities with the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions levels by 2050.
Disguising itself as a philanthropic endeavor essential for the “sustainable finance agenda,” the NZBA functions as an agent of the left’s radical climate agenda. It wrongfully prioritizes virtue-signaling climate boondoggles. Thankfully, data suggests that members have engaged primarily only in noisy financial virtue signaling. Altering investment strategy to advance climatism will hinder economic growth and destroy shareholder value.
These banks should be commended for waking up and walking away from this woke climate pact that does nothing for the environment or the American people. Their withdrawal is a win for the growing pendulum swing against the progressive takeover of American industry under the banner of environmental, social, and governance standards (ESGs).
In the name of “social justice” and “progress,” ESGs wreak havoc on the economy. ESG subsidizes unreliable energy leading to blackouts, raises costs on American families, and reduces good financial investments, while discouraging innovation in the name of climate alarmism and advancing “social justice.” These “standards” undermine America’s competitiveness on the world stage, leave us more vulnerable to China and make life more difficult for American families.
The recent whiplash against NZBA’s ESG agenda is having a resounding effect. BlackRock announced last week that it was pulling out of a similar UN-sponsored climate initiative: the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. This decision comes in the wake of continued scrutiny around BlackRock’s history of aggressive ESG investment strategies.
The incoming Trump administration is likely to continue amplifying pressure on pro-ESG companies by countering woke ESG practices and supporting antitrust violation investigations of ESG zealots.
For the past two years, several Republican state attorneys general have threatened legal action and opened investigations into ESG-compliant companies. Agreements like the NZBA often require collaboration across different banks, which can limit competition and naturally raise antitrust concerns.
By committing to a net-zero action plan, banks are essentially promising to fully boycott the fossil fuel industry by 2050, which could compromise their duties to investors and customers. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton conducted a 2023 review of major US banks under a Texas law prohibiting governmental entities from entering into business with companies boycotting the oil and gas industries. He closed the probe following the banks’ withdrawal from NZBA.
Still, the work has just begun. Undoing the damage will take time. The recent mass withdrawal from the NZBA is encouraging, but the gesture doesn’t necessarily signify total victory over ESG.
Although Bank of America withdrew from the NZBA, it remains publicly committed to the net zero platform and principles. Similarly, Citigroup said that it also remains “committed to reaching net-zero” and announced that while it was pulling out of the NZBA, it will still support the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, NZBA’s parent alliance that Citigroup helped found.
To truly regain trust with American consumers, these banks must demonstrate a renewed commitment to their fiduciary duties to shareholders and depositors. Loans and investments should be made in pursuit of maximizing value rather than forging virtue-signaling global alliances with others’ resources.
Time will tell if these recent moves are simply media stunts to avoid the ire of the incoming President Trump or if a true realignment of principles and ethics is occurring in the financial sector. Either way, this news is a win for economic freedom and prosperity and is yet another step in neutralizing the political correctness and radical wokeism holding corporate America hostage.
Citigroup, among the more “progressive” (i.e., woke) financial institutions in the world, held their annual stockholder’s meeting on Tuesday. CFACT, which owns shares in the company, participated to ensure there was at least some pushback against this board’s radical green agenda – a topic that actually wound up dominating the discussions. In fact, the meeting even opened with the company bragging about their present meeting being less carbon intensive than others in the past.
Citigroup, among the more “progressive” (i.e., woke) financial institutions in the world, held their annual stockholder’s meeting on Tuesday. CFACT, which owns shares in the company, participated to ensure there was at least some pushback against this board’s radical green agenda – a topic that actually wound up dominating the discussions. In fact, the meeting even opened with the company bragging about their present meeting being less carbon intensive than others in the past.
CFACT’s Greg Neff confronted CEO Jane Fraser with a hard-hitting question that took aim at the company’s “$1 Trillion Sustainable Finance Goal”. In recent years, Citigroup announced a commitment to lend $1 trillion by 2030 in “sustainable financing,” which is a significant percentage of what the company is likely to lend out during that period. Neff asked Ms. Fraser, “In light of bank failures such as Silicon Valley Bank that prioritized ‘climate and sustainability’, shouldn’t Citigroup consider scaling back or eliminating its ‘$1 Trillion Sustainable Finance Goal’ in order to better protect its shareholders?”
Ms. Fraser responded with empty assurances that Citigroup’s finances were much more solid than some of those institutions that had fallen victim to prioritizing social policy ahead of sound economics. Said Fraser, through “our trillion-dollar sustainable finance goal, Citi is financing and facilitating a wide range of activities from renewable energy and clean technology to healthcare and affordable housing. And the goal contributes to the growth of scalable financial solutions to address environmental and social challenges.” She went on to boast that in the past three years, the company has already invested more than $440 billion in environmental and social activities.
This response by Ms. Fraser, of course, hardly satisfied CFACT’s concerns. By not giving any specifics and just pontificating about the merits of the company’s sustainable development goals with no concrete assurances other than the CEO’s good word that everything is “all under control,” there’s little reason shareholders shouldn’t be alarmed. One wonders if Sun Valley Trust’s CEO might have given the exact same type of answer Ms. Fraser did right before the company capitulated.
In any event, CFACT, as a stockholder in Citigroup, also had the opportunity to vote on several board and stockholder proposals during the gathering. On the friendly side, the first was from CFACT’s ally, the National Center for Public Policy Research, which asked the company to do a report disclosing the risk of the Citigroup’s DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) policies. This proposal was particularly timely in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling in SFFA v. Harvard that determined such policies violated the 14th Amendment. The second was from the American Family Association and called for the company to create a report explaining the risk of politicized debanking. Both only received about 2% support. While neither measure actually passed, and the Citigroup board urged everyone in attendance to vote against them, the message these groups were trying to deliver nevertheless was heard loud and clear. Let’s hope they make a future impact, as they often do despite their apparent lopsided results.
As it is now “shareholder season,” stay tuned for more updates soon. CFACT will continue to participate in shareholder activism in order to provide a counterbalance to the extreme ESG and “sustainable development” agendas that have sadly woven their way into America’s corporate boardrooms.
As part of its Shareholder Accountability Project, CFACT attended the shareholder meetings of Bank of America and CitiGroup to act as a watchdog on the two large banking corporations.
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As part of its Shareholder Accountability Project, CFACT attended the shareholder meetings of Bank of America and CitiGroup to act as a watchdog on the two large banking corporations.
At center focus of each meeting were the practice of ESG investing (Environmental, Social, and Governance), which prioritizes leftist ideology over sound financial practices. CFACT asked questions to each of the company’s CEOs and voted on pertinent proposals, hoping to hold management’s feet to the fire on the ill-advised practice of ESG.
At the Bank of America meeting, CFACT’s question was posed directly to the CEO, Bryan Moynihan, live at the hearing.
CFACT’S question was:
“The large number of shareholder proposals regarding climate change clearly indicates that Bank of America’s strategy of trying to appease the activists is not working. Why doesn’t Bank of America simply focus on maximizing value for shareholders and just ignore these people?”
CEO Bryan Moynihan waved off the impact such activists have on the company and answered, “I think we focus on running the company under responsive growth along the dimensions that are laid out clearly in our annual report and proxy statement. And so, you know, this is the way it works in America, there are the ability to have shareholder proposals, and we will address them each time, based off the rules of the SEC, and the key thing is they really don’t impact how we run the company – we run the company on consistent strategy and that’s what we’ve done for years and that’s what we’ll continue to do so as laid out by [inaudible] and our board and the team to continue to drive forward to do what we need to do to continue to help clients make the transition on energy, while at the same time importantly preserving a strong energy security for our country and the countries around the world.”
Meanwhile, at the CitiGroup meeting, when challenged on the bank’s role in continued financing of fossil fuel projects by a leftist shareholder, CEO Jane Fraser pushed back and said, “…the global economy simply cannot operate without fossil fuels today, nor can it grow without them in the mix. And that’s because we simply don’t yet have affordable alternatives at the scale and reliability that is required…”
While the practices and management of these banks are by no means perfect, it is refreshing to hear CEOs push back against some of the climate alarmist rhetoric aiming to drag these companies into extremism. This is a slight shift from prior years when companies were much more willing to give in to the demands of activist investors. CFACT is proud to have had a role in being a force for reason pushing back against the “woke” climate tide.
And what’s even better is that the shareholder proposals brought by climate activists at each meeting went down in flames, while proposals brought by CFACT allies to CitiGroup and Bank of America, despite failing, showed promising results for possible passage in the future.
That proposal, put in by our allies from the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) at both shareholder meetings, called for the establishment of an “independent board chairman,” and was primarily necessary because of Brian Moynihan, the chair and CEO of Bank of America. Moynihan is running the company in such a manner as to promote globalist World Economic Forum (WEF) and its ESG priorities over shareholder values and needs to be held accountable. CitiGroup chair and CEO Jane Fraser continues to promote ESG initiatives, despite some of her positive comments on fossil fuels.
Paul Chesser, who spoke for NLPC at the Bank of America meeting, said, “My fellow shareholders may be surprised to learn that the World Economic Forum prioritizes transhumanism, abolition of private property, consumption of bugs, social credit systems, the ‘Great Reset,’ and other Orwellian objectives. Why is this important for Bank of America to boost these globalists at the expense of US sovereignty and values?”
The proposal garnered 26% in favor at the Bank of America meeting and 18.12% in favor at CitiGroup; still a way to go towards future passage, but the proposals performed far better than other leftist proposals brought before the shareholders.
For example, a proposal to “request that the Board of Directors adopt a policy for a time bound phase out lending and underwriting to projects and companies engaging in new fossil fuel exploration and development” failed badly, receiving only 9.94% of votes in favor at CitiGroup and a similar proposal received 7% in favor at Bank of America. Those were the lowest approval ratings received for any proposals at the CitiGroup and Bank of America meetings.
CFACT, of course, voted against the proposals.
These were the first of the shareholder meetings of 2023 CFACT attended to bring reason and facts to corporate America board rooms. More meetings covering the sectors of energy and technology are to come, and CFACT will bring its same tenacity and focus on facts to these meetings going forward.
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