Credit Suisse Group AG, ING Groep NV and BNP Paribas SA will stop providing trade financing for oil exports from the Ecuadorian Amazon, after pressure from climate activists, Bloomberg News reported. The three banks were collectively responsible for $5.5 billion of such financing in the past 11 years, according to research by Amazon Watch and Stand.earth. The two activist groups called out the companies for double standards, saying they promoted corporate sustainability while also financing the Amazon oil trade that contributes to climate change. Financial institutions, which provide some of the world’s biggest polluters with funds to extract and trade fossil fuels, are increasingly succumbing to pressure from environmentalists and their own shareholders to square sustainability ambitions with how they lend money. Credit Suisse, ING and BNP now join the likes of Bank of America Corp. in limiting financing for hydrocarbons in environmentally sensitive areas. The European banks, which had provided letters of credit to U.S. companies including Marathon Petroleum Corp., Phillips 66 and Citgo to buy Amazon oil, have pledged to stop financing such transactions. Read more.
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