(Zurich) A group of investors, including asset management firm Legal & General Investment Management, is suing Swiss commodities giant Glencore over thermal coal, they announced Thursday.
This group of investors, including HSBC Asset Management, the managing arm of British banking giant HSBC, and Australian fund Vision Super, is asking Glencore, through a shareholder resolution, to explain how its coal strategy aligns with the Paris Agreement limiting climate change to 1.5 degrees. percentage. It also includes members of the Ethos Foundation, a Swiss joint stock organization representing pension funds.
These investors, who together represent around $2,200 billion (2.072 billion euros) in assets under management, have relied on the company’s platform allowing them to submit a resolution to the annual general meeting to demand “more clarity” on the group’s strategy. With regard to thermal coal, in particular on its investment spending in production.
Nearly a third of shareholders have rejected its climate plan in 2022, those investors said in a joint press release, believing the decision constitutes a “significant escalation of pressure on Glencore.”
Alors que des concurrents like Rio Tinto or Anglo-American is the désengagent of Charbon, Glencore maintient the cap sur this matière premiere malgre les critiques d’actionnaires, expliquant vouloir gérer ses mines de manière responsable jusqu’à ce qu’elles arrivent in épuisement au fil the time.
“Glencore has a tremendous opportunity to participate in and benefit from the energy transition,” Michael Werch, chief investment officer and deputy managing director of Australia’s Vision Super Fund, said in the release. He said the group is well positioned in the copper and nickel business as its recycling business grows.
“That is why it is disappointing that Glencore continues to invest in thermal coal,” he added, noting that this was a “shrinking” sector.
At the end of 2021, Glencore had already found itself in the sights of activist fund Bluebell Capital Partners, who had urged the group to separate coal from the rest of its business, arguing that it was not an “incoming raw material”. He stated that investors no longer wanted exposure to coal in their portfolios, without being able to influence Glencore’s strategy.
Asked about the decision, the Swiss group told AFP it would publish its next climate report in March, and that the document would “provide an update” on progress.
In 2021, Glencore produced 103.3m tonnes of coal, and production increased by 7% in the first nine months of 2022 to 81.9m tonnes for the period from January to the end of September, even if the group had cut its production target entirely. of the year at the end of October due to flooding in Australia which disrupted its mines.
In the first half of 2022, Glencore saw its net profit explode to more than $12 billion as oil and coal prices soared in the face of the energy crisis since the invasion of Ukraine.
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