Today Credit Suisse published its new climate strategy (‘Say on Climate’ plan), which it will put to an advisory vote to shareholders at its 2023 AGM. As part of the plan, Credit Suisse set five additional emissions reduction targets for the power generation, commercial real estate, iron and steel, aluminium, and automotive sectors.

The bank slightly improved transparency through some additional disclosures around its Client Energy Transition Framework (CETF). However, despite indicating an intention to do so on an undefined timeline, it failed to incorporate capital markets activities in its disclosures and targets, or update its oil and gas policy.

Responding to the plan, Kelly Shields, Campaign and Project Manager at ShareAction, said: “Credit Suisse’s new climate strategy is not fit for purpose – it ignores two of the most crucial areas of fossil fuel financing that would have enabled the bank to reach net zero by 2050.

“The bank must urgently update its oil and gas policy, which is one of the weakest in the European banking sector, with a particular focus on fracking. Until Credit Suisse publishes a timebound plan to incorporate capital markets activities, which represent the bulk of its financing to top oil and gas expanders, in its disclosures and targets, shareholders must continue to press the bank for greater ambition on climate.

For these reasons, ShareAction is urging investors to vote against the proposal. As the bank restructures it has a vital opportunity to ensure its sustainability commitments are at the core of its business and are ambitious enough to tackle the worsening climate crisis around the world.”

Last year, ShareAction and Ethos Foundation co-filed a shareholder resolution with 11 institutional investors in Credit Suisse, who represented EUR 2.2 trillion in assets under management, calling on the bank to improve its climate disclosures, emissions reduction targets and fossil fuel policies.

Credit Suisse responded by offering shareholders an advisory vote on its climate report in 2023. ShareAction warned that this did not adequately address the concerns raised by the resolution, which requested concrete climate commitments and to embed sustainability in the bank’s articles of association, requiring the bank to deliver on its net zero goal despite changes in the governance structure.

The Swiss bank is now undergoing radical organisational restructuring. The bank’s past failures to manage risk adequately have led to the difficult position it is in today. Fully embedding climate change into its processes presents an important commercial opportunity for the Group.

ShareAction is calling on investors, who have been given just three weeks to assess the plan, to use their voting rights to signal that the current level of ambition demonstrated by Credit Suisse on climate is unsatisfactory at its AGM on 4th April.

Notes to editors

ShareAction will also call on investors to vote against UBS’s Say on Climate plan at its AGM on the 5th of April. The Swiss bank ranked 24th out of 25 in ShareAction’s latest ranking of the climate practices of Europe’s largest 25 banks. Yet, in its latest climate update UBS failed to update its fossil fuel policy, and omitted capital markets activities from its targets and disclosures, despite this being the source of 90 per cent of the financing it provided to 50 of the biggest oil and gas expanders from 2016-2021.

ShareAction will publish a more in-depth analysis of Credit Suisse and UBS’s Say on Climate plans on 21st March.

In ShareAction’s ranking of the top 25 European banks in December 2022, Credit Suisse ranked 20th with a score of 41 per cent and was found to have one of the weakest oil and gas policies in the sector.

Another ShareAction report from February 2022 found that Credit Suisse had channelled more than US$18 billion into 50 top oil and gas expanders between 2016 and 2021 and 77 per cent of Credit Suisse’s of this financing was in the form of capital markets activities, which are excluded from its current targets.

Credit Suisse is Europe’s second largest provider of financing to fracking companies and provided $15.83 billion to top tracking companies between 2016 and 2021, according to RAN.

Reposted from the original press release on ShareAction's website here.