London (AFP)

About fifteen major investors will file a resolution at the next HSBC general meeting to force the bank to do more on the climate and reduce fossil fuel financing, the NGO ShareAction announced on Sunday.

The initiative, coordinated by ShareAction, is supported in particular by the French asset management giant Amundi or the British hedge fund Man Group, as well as other investors in the United Kingdom, France, Denmark and Sweden, according to a press release.

The 15 institutional investors, who manage a total of 2.4 trillion in assets and with which 117 individual shareholders are associated, hope that the bank's board of directors will support their resolution at the general meeting next April.

The resolution requires HSBC to publish a strategy and targets to reduce its funding of fossil fuels, starting with coal, by following a timetable consistent with the Paris climate accords.

According to the NGO Rainforest Action Network (RAN), HSBC is the second bank that finances fossil fuels the most in Europe behind the British Barclays.

In October 2020, HSBC committed to achieving carbon neutrality for its financing portfolio by 2050, and said it wanted to align with the objectives of the Paris agreement.

But it did not give a specific objective on the financing of the most polluting energies.

ShareAction observed that in the four months leading up to HSBC's announcement, the bank granted an additional $ 1.8 billion in funding to the fossil fuel sector, including infrastructure for coal and oil sands. .

As this is a resolution presented by shareholders, it will need to get 75% of the votes to pass, unlike ordinary resolutions which only need a simple majority.

"Five years after the Paris agreements, HSBC continues to pour billions into the coal sector, a behavior that is not consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees," said Jeanne Martin, of the NGO ShareAction.

"If HSBC is serious about its ambition of carbon neutrality, it will support this resolution," she said.

Asked by AFP, the bank said "to be firmly determined to tackle climate change".

"We are working on the details of our roadmap to carbon neutrality and we continue to engage positively with our customers, shareholders and ShareAction," said a spokesperson.

A group of shareholders, supported by the NGO, had already presented a resolution on the climate at the general meeting of Barclays last May, which was a first for a European bank.

Under the pressure, Barclays had decided to present its own resolution with slightly less ambitious objectives, but which had been adopted by shareholders unlike that carried by ShareAction.

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