Seven of Bloomberg’s Top Ten “Greenest Banks” Are Climate Killers

A Guest blog-post by Yann Louvel, BankTrack‘s Climate and Energy Campaign Coordinator This week, Bloomberg published the results of its third annual ranking of the “world’s greenest banks”: Citi was ranked first, followed by Santander and JPMorgan. The study assesses banks based on their lending to clean-energy projects and reduction in their own power consumption [...]

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Greenwash of the Week

It’s the time of year when banks put their ‘best foot forward’ and prepare to be scrutinized by their shareholders at annual general meetings (AGMs). It’s a legal requirement, the AGM is held every year where the board of directors is elected, and the highest-ranking staff report to members on previous and future activities. So [...]

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Wall Street Flees Wall Street

Wall Street is scared shitless. They’d never admit it, but the way the big Wall Street banks are rapidly relocating their annual shareholder meetings from the concrete canyons of Midtown and lower Manhattan this shareholder season to points south, north and west means that fear is not only visible, you can smell it on them [...]

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Top 10 Dirty Corporate Tax Dodgers of 2011

Two weeks ago it was announced that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax rate in the world sparking furious debate from Fox News types concerned about corporate well being. At RAN, we decided to dig a little deeper to see whether the corporate tax rate really is unfairly penalizing multi billion dollar corporations. Our [...]

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The Top 20 Climate Killer Banks

A new report titled “Bankrolling Climate Change” calls out the top 20 banks that are financing the dirty coal industry. The top three “climate killers” will not come as much of a surprise: JP Morgan Chase, Citi, and none other than Bank of America top the list with $22 billion, $18.27 billion, an $16.79 billion [...]

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PNC Bank’s Evolving Approach To The Energy Sector

PNC recently released their 2011 Corporate Responsibility Report. Documents like this  provide a window into how a bank thinks about its environmental and social impact. RAN has been paying close attention to PNC Bank and its approach to the energy industry for a couple of years, so I was eager to get my hands on [...]

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How Did the Banks Get So Weak, Anyway?

A great article from Forbes appeared in my Google alerts last week and I had to share. The article begins as yet another article describing the sad state of affairs at big US banks, namely Bank of America and Citi. The article goes on, however, to give a refreshingly short and simple explanation of how [...]

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Who’s Bankrolling AEP, the Coal Company Lobbying for More Coal?

American Electric Power Company, more commonly known as AEP, has been in the news lately. The banks providing funds to this dirty energy purveyor haven’t received as much scrutiny, however. Let’s fix that, shall we? Earlier this month, AEP announced that upcoming EPA clean air regulations (which have now been announced) may mean that the [...]

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Powershift Joins RAN on Banks Tour of Shame

Last week at Power Shift 2011, Rainforest Action Network teamed up with over a hundred youth to take the streets of Washington D.C. and speak a little truth to Wall Street’s power. Banks like Citi and PNC remain some of the biggest funders of mountaintop removal coal mining and tar sand extraction and pipeline projects [...]

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Corporate Tax Dodgers: The Dirtiest Dozen

Co-authored by Matt Leonard Billionaire real estate investor and legendary tax evader Leona Helmsley famously said: “Only the little people pay taxes.” It turns out Helmsley was all too right. Last month’s discovery that GE paid zero in taxes in 2010 has exploded across the news. But GE is not alone. Rainforest Action Network reviewed [...]

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