Danish funds challenge Nordea at AGM over Arctic Oil
Two Danish institutional investors have backed a shareholder resolution calling on the Nordic region's largest bank,?Nordea, to cease all financing of companies that are expanding Arctic oil and gas production due to environmental risks.
Investors, pension funds Sampension and Akademiker, informed the annual general meeting of the bank on Tuesday about their voting intentions. The activist motion comes in the wake of the oil crisis caused by the Iran war and after the Norwegian Government announced last year plans to increase drilling in Norway's Arctic offshore region.
The resolution targets Norwegian 'energy companies Equinor BP Var Energi and Aker BP, which are involved in Arctic exploration and drilling.
The resolution calls for Nordea, along with its Nordic competitors - Danske Bank Swedbank Handelsbanken Nykredit OP Financial Group – to stop lending to companies who are expanding their oil-and-gas activities north of the Arctic Circle.
Katrine Ehnhuus, senior advisor at the Nordic Center for Sustainable Finance and one of the authors of the proposal, said that the Arctic ecosystems were vulnerable.
Nordea has said that it will continue to fund the Norwegian companies in question, but does not offer dedicated funding for oil and gas drilling or expansion.
Nordea stated in an email that "we continue to support carefully selected companies who play an important part in ensuring an affordable and secure energy supply in Europe."
The Sampension said they would vote in favor of the resolution, because "certain types" of activities "appeared to have been excluded", from Nordea’s assessment of its exposure to fossil-fuel expansion.
Jacob Ehlerth Jorgensen is the head of ESG for Sampension. He told us by email that "in our assessment of the proposal and Board of Directors response to the proposal it appears the company hasn't?provided investors with a sufficiently transparent picture of its activities relating to?the funding of fossil fuel expansion".
(source: Reuters)
