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• Bank is a leading financier of global coal, oil and gas expansion
• ESG announcement lacks crucial steps to reduce bank’s fossil finance
• Bank will arrange IPO of German oil and gas company Wintershall DEA

One week ahead of its annual general meeting, Deutsche Bank has released a statement on ESG (environmental, social and governance) topics. Regine Richter, Finance Campaigner at Urgewald, commented on the bank's announcement.

• Uniper uses Energy Charter Treaty to stifle measures to combat climate crisis
• Energy utility’s fossil gas strategy incompatible with UN Climate Agreement
• Supply chain deals reveal weak Human Rights standards

• UK bank channeled $10 bill to coal industry between Oct 2018 and Oct 2020
• $5.3 bill of Standard Chartered’s coal finance went to coal plant developers
• Bank will only start significantly dropping coal clients in 2027

• Coal exclusion rules tightened, RWE increasingly likely to be dropped
• Allianz catches up with competitors in oil sands exclusion
• A lot remains to be done regarding the general exclusion of oil and gas

More than five years after the Paris Agreement, the UK financial sector is actively undermining Government efforts to phase out coal, according to a new report from NGO Reclaim Finance (1). The group’s research, undertaken in collaboration with German NGO Urgewald, has found that five leading UK banks provided $56 billion of support to companies on the Global Coal Exit List (GCEL) between October 2018 and October 2020  (2). Investors led by Legal & General (L&G) likewise held $47bn in GCEL companies in January 2021. Worse still, the report unveils widespread support for companies planning on expanding coal among UK banks and investors.