ActionAid reacts the resignation of HSBC’s chief executive Noel Quinn
Reacting to news of the resignation of HSBC’s chief executive Noel Quinn, ActionAid International’s Global Lead on Climate Justice Teresa Anderson, said:
“HSBC is in the climate spotlight for its massive financing of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture, the two biggest causes of climate change. As communities in the Global South feel the impacts of HSBC's financing decisions, Quinn and his bankers in HSBC's boardrooms chose to remain oblivious, comfortably counting the profits rather than the pain.”
“The impending change of guard at HSBC is a chance to end its era of climate-wrecking profits as the largest European financier of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture in the Global South. Our research in September showed that HSBC has provided US$17.2bn to industrial agriculture activities, and US$63.5bn to fossil fuel activities in the Global South since the Paris Agreement. If HSBC genuinely wants to be a bank for the future, it must bring in new leadership with the courage and climate vision to end the financing of the industries that are wrecking the planet”.
ENDS
Teresa Anderson is available for interviews. Contact the ActionAid press office on media-enquiries@actionaid.org or on +263776665065
About ActionAid
ActionAid is a global federation working with more than 41 million people living in more than 71 of the world’s poorest countries. We want to see a just, fair, and sustainable world, in which everybody enjoys the right to a life of dignity, and freedom from poverty and oppression. We work to achieve social justice and gender equality and to eradicate poverty.
