A Spokeswoman For The New York Fed Has Said The Bank Can’t Comment On Customer Account Activity, C
Argimiro Krishnamoorthy
Yet between 2001 and 2015, over 300 millionhectares of tree cover was destroyed: nearly the size of India. About a quarterof this loss was driven by the production of commodities such as beef and palmoil, according to a recent study. It also found that in south-east Asia alone,deforestation for growing commodities such as palm oil is responsible for asmuch as 78% of tree cover loss. This is madness.
The companies razing forests to produce palm oil, beef, and rubber are currently able to secure financing for new projects at commercially attractive rates from banking hubs in the US, Europe and Asia. Global Witness investigated the financing of six huge agribusinesses: three operating in the Amazon, two in the Congo Basin, and one in New Guinea.
A Spokeswoman For The New York Fed Has Said The Bank Cant Comment On Customer Account Activity, C
Download https://pimlm.com/2yJZPY
Global Witness has discovered that between 2013 and 2019, they were backed to the tune of $44 billion by over 300 investment firms, banks, and pension funds headquartered across the globe. The household name institutions our expos highlights will be familiar to anyone who has looked at the skyline of Wall Street or Canary Wharf, read a quality newspaper or opened a current account.
Over the last decade, many financial institutions have committed totackling deforestation, so often associated with human rights abuses orcorruption. One group of 56 investors managing approximately $7.9 trillion in assets has urged the palm oil sector to commit to no-deforestation policies. Some 12 banks adopted the Soft Commodities Compact,aiming to achieve net zero deforestation by 2020 in the soy, palm oil,beef and pulp/paper supply chains of around 400 companies with combinedsales of 3.5 trillion euros.
The NGO Global Canopy assessed 150 financial institutions andfound nearly two-thirds had no policy covering four key forest-riskcommodities, beef, soy, palm oil and timber. Yet as our investigationshows, even existing policies are widely ignored.
This sprawling piece of data journalism revealswith new starkness the golden sinews that link London, Berlin and New York Cityto the dwindling rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo Basin and the island of NewGuinea. These are the three largest uninterrupted rainforest regions in theworld.
A few years ago, deforestation in the Amazon wasdeclining, partly thanks to government action. But that progress is beingundone under the rule of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, with cattleranching the biggest culprit, according to numerous industry studies.
This is not the first time Deutsche Bank has been accused of irresponsible investments. In 2013, Global Witness revealed how two Vietnamese companies, bankrolled by Deutsche Bank, leased vast tracts of land for rubber plantations in Laos and Cambodia - with disastrous consequences for local communities and the environment.
Company financing can be broadly divided into two categories: debt and equity. An equity investment involves institutions or individuals subscribing for new shares in a company. This allows companies to raise money for new projects. The most common type of debt is loans, typically from financial institutions. This may be in the form of a revolving credit facility, which operates like an overdraft. The company may also issue bonds, which are a form of tradable debt. Banks may be involved as underwriters, where they agree to buy any bonds not acquired by other investors.Companies sometimes list shares on one of the many global stock markets to attract new shareholders or increase investment from existing ones. Financial institutions may underwrite the offer, advise on this process or act as broker to help find investors.
Industrial scale rubber, palm oil and cattle rearing all require major capital outlay. If banks and investors adopted appropriate due diligence measures, it might no longer be possible for the banking majors to fund new and destructive operations on commercially attractive rates.
This means Marfrig cannot say its supply chainis deforestation free. (Marfrig insisted to Global Witness that it had acommitment to zero deforestation in the Amazon, with a rigorous and technologicallyadvanced sourcing procedure.)
During that time, the company secured a $2.2 billion revolving loan facility. This arrangement was provided by multiple household names in the banking world, including HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank. They were among the Senior Mandated Lead Arrangers of that loan. Global Witness estimates HSBC provided $1.1 billion in loans and $583 million in underwriting services to the company between 2013 and 2019. Standard Chartered, meanwhile, provided an estimated $187 million in underwriting services and $1.16 billion in loans.
In 2017, HSBC proudly released a new policyrequiring palm oil producers to consent to the bank disclosing that they are acustomer. Pushed on whether a single client had so far been named, HSBC made nocomment. Getty Images
Goldman Sachs has held over $4.5 million worth of shares in controversial Brazilian beef producer JBS, as well as a small number of shares in the beef producer Marfrig, between 2018- 2019. JBS has repeatedly bought cattle from deforested land. The bank did not reply to repeated emails from Global Witness.
Bank of America underwrote bond issuances worth an estimated $498 million for the Brazilian beef trader Minerva since 2014, as well as providing over $50 million in loans to Marfrig. It did not respond to repeated queries from Global Witness.
Morgan Stanley underwrote a series of bond issuances worth an estimated $947 million for Brazilian beef trader Marfrig between 2014 and 2017. A spokeswoman conceded it had financed Marfrig, but noted the bank had not done so in 2018 or 2019. She insisted deforestation risks are analyzed carefully.
HSBC bankrolled companies destroying forests for palm oil there, the Environmental Investigation Agency reported. (The bank claimed in response it only financed companies that sourced certified sustainable palm oil.)
And other household names such as Citigroup, Standard Chartered and the Dutch Rabobank were exposed by RAN financing a company linked to human rights violations in the palm oil sector. All three subsequently cancelled loans to the company involved. For decades now, the financial sector has greased the wheels of the industries turning Indonesia into the global badboy of deforestation.
The investing strategies exposed in this report are cynical andshort-sighted. Investments driving climate change present material risks toshareholders. For instance, when the agribusiness United Cacao was delisted bythe London Stock Exchange over claims of illegal deforestation, its investorslost $42 million in one quarter. Asgovernments begin regulating against products grown on deforested land, andmarkets increasingly value commodities produced without deforestation,financiers run the risk of ending up with stranded assets.
Instead, those in the financial sector must take responsibility forthe impact of their financing and investments on forests, people and theclimate. They have a responsibility to the planet and its people, theirinvestors, and future generations, to ensure that they are not fuelingdeforestation or human rights abuses. Financial sector companies must ensuremore rigorous due diligence, strengthen their deforestation policies andcommitments, and take meaningful measures to ensure that they implement themeffectively.
But self-regulation alone is not enough. Policy makers mustaddress the systemic failure of the financial system, and the companies itfinances or invests in, to tackle deforestation and human rights abuses byintroducing regulatory measures, including mandatory due diligence, andproperly enforcing them. Without urgent action and powerful new laws, the global financialsystem will only pour fuel on the deforestation wildfires.
Key governmental and private sector commitments on deforestationset targets to achieve by 2020, making it a critical year for forests. Allactors must seize the opportunity to renew and strengthen their efforts totackle deforestation by committing to time-bound action plans, which areindependently verifiable and publicly reported to ensure accountability for theirdelivery.
Global Witness commissioned the sustainability and supply chain analysis company Profundo to research financial flows to the selected agribusiness companies named in this report, as well as their group level holding companies, group financing vehicles, and their relevant subsidiaries. This research relied primarily on financial databases for the collection of financial data, including Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters Eikon, as well as on company reporting. It also included in-depth analysis of company websites, annual reports, company registers, databases such as EMIS and Orbis, and other industry sources.
Table 1 shows the commitment assigned to book runner groups with this estimation method. When the number of total participants in relation to the number of bookrunners increases, the share that is attributed to bookrunners decreases. This prevents very large differences in amounts attributed to book runners and other participants.
The number in the denominator is used to let the formula start at 40% in case of a bookratio of 3.0. As the bookratio increases the formula will go down from 40%. In case of issuances the number in the denominator is 0.769800358.
JPMorgan Chase, one of the nation's largest banks, is considering capping debit card transactions at either $50 or $100, according to a source with knowledge of the proposal. And the cap would apply even if you run your debit card as credit.
Right now, every time you swipe your debit card your bank charges the retailer an average fee of 44 cents, which it shares with its partners. Those little fees, however, add up to about $16 billion per year, according to 2009 data from the Federal Reserve.
But as part of the Wall Street reform legislation that was passed last year, these fees are being slashed. The Fed is currently proposing rules that would go into effect in July and would cap interchange fees at 12 cents.
7fc3f7cf58