Nordea shareholders reject resolution on fossil fuel lending
Nordea shareholders have overwhelmingly voted against a shareholder proposal in Helsinki today, asking the firm to cease lending and investment in fossil fuel companies that lack Paris-aligned transition plans
The proposal by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and ActionAid Denmark calls out the bank’s role in continuing to support upstream companies engaged in the expansion of oil and gas production with loans and underwriting totalling $641m over the past two years (July 2022 – June 2024).
It was rejected by 95.36% of all shareholders, according to advance votes.
Earlier this month, the Nordic Centre for Sustainable Finance released a report on the role of Nordic banks in fossil fuel lending, highlighting that DNB and Nordea together hold 60% of the fossil fuel investments among the nine largest Nordic banks.
Nordea alone has lent more than $400m to the coal industry, despite being a member of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance Steering Group, the report found.
Speaking from the floor, one of the delegates at the AGM highlighted Nordea’s role in financing the controversial East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) between Uganda and Tanzania, highlighting that the project has contributed to the deaths of people in the region and that authorities had violently cracked down on dissent.
“We have been waiting for years and decades to change these companies,” she said, describing Total as “a dangerous company that does not answer to pleas, it answers to power. It is time to use your power and say that you will not invest in new fossil fuel projects,” she added.
Speakers also pointed out that other Nordic banks, including Danske and Handelsbanken, had already committed to ceasing to lend to the fossil fuel industry.
Yet while her remarks were acknowledged by the chair of the board, Stephen Hester, he did not commit to ceasing fossil fuel lending. “We agree that the world needs to transition as fast as it is able to do,” he said before referring to the need to remain independent from Russian gas supplies.
“We are different from Danske Bank, we are one of the two biggest banks in Norway, which is of course the main source of oil and gas production in the Nordics. It is not viable to serve our customers in Norway whilst rejecting investment in the biggest aspect of our economy,” he added.
The largest shareholders in Nordea are BlackRock, Norges Bank Investment Management and Nordea Fonden.
