A group of HSBC Holdings Plc shareholders have filed a resolution urging the bank to cut its support to the fossil-fuel industry. Amundi SA, Europe’s largest listed asset manager, and Man Group Plc, the world’s biggest publicly traded hedge fund firm, were among 15 institutional investors overseeing a combined $2.4 trillion that are backing the move, according to a statement from ShareAction, the U.K. nonprofit that coordinated the plan. The money managers, along with 117 individual shareholders, asked HSBC to publish a strategy to reduce its exposure to fossil-fuel assets and set targets in line with the Paris Agreement. Banks are major contributors to global warming via their financing and lending activities, providing the world’s biggest polluters with funding for extraction and drilling. Their role as the money pipeline for the fossil-fuel industry has attracted greater scrutiny from investors and activists in recent years. It also has coincided with the banks themselves starting to build up their green-finance businesses. “For a long time, banks remained out of the spotlight and all the focus was on the actual carbon emitters, but it’s becoming more obvious that banks are part of the problem too,” said Jeanne Martin, senior campaign manager at ShareAction. “There’s now increased interest among investors on the role of finance firms in facilitating emissions and in decarbonization.”

HSBC Shareholders Ask Bank to Cut Fossil-Fuel Lending Exposure – Bloomberg