One of the investors of the State Bank of India (SBI), the French giant Amundi has announced that it will sell its SBI green bonds if the bank grants a loan of 5,000 crore rupees to the Adanis Carmichael coal mine in Australia .

“We believe that SBI should not fund this project. Ultimately it is their decision but we were extremely clear that if they decided to do so, we would immediately divest ”, Director of the Institutional Clients & ESG Division, Jean Jacques Barberis, was quoted by a global press service.

“The financing of the mine would be in” total contradiction “with the activities of the SBI financed by its green bond, he added.

“We have engaged SBI by asking them not to participate (in the loan) and now we are awaiting their response,” he said.

Amundi, which holds the bond in its Amundi Planet Emerging Green One fund, said it learned this week that SBI is considering financing the Carmichael thermal coal mine in Australia.

The Adani Carmichael project has encountered opposition from climate activists over the issue of carbon emissions.

Reports say that Amundi’s move demonstrates that some financial institutions understand the serious reputational risks associated with supporting a new thermal coal project like the Adani mega mine, particularly amid a global pandemic and d ‘an intensification of climatic disasters.

Amundi is the largest asset manager in Europe and ranks in the top 10 worldwide. It manages assets worth 1,650 billion euros.

Responsible investment was the starting point of Amundi’s investment policy. When it was created in 2010, Amundi made social and environmental responsibility one of its four founding pillars. She was one of the founding signatories of the Principles for Responsible Investment.

(Only the title and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)

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