Sustainable Finance Newsletter - Banks ease climate coalition rules

By Ross Kerber

April 16 (Reuters) - The largest bank climate coalition loosened some of its membership rules, its chair told Reuters, as you can read about below.

Some context for the move is the turn away from environmental priorities by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. In fact, the tensions between his actions and various institutions are the broader theme of this week's newsletter - as you will see via stories about how universities and law firms are responding to the president who has made a sweeping assertion of power since returning to the White House.

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Banks ease climate coalition rules

The top banking coalition meant to counter climate change voted to loosen some of its membership rules, reflecting the slow pace of change in the real economy, its chair told Reuters.

The UN-backed Net Zero Banking Alliance has been canvassing members amid the withdrawal of some of the coalition's biggest banks, and as the United States leads calls to abandon climate action in the financial sector.

Officials said policymaking and technology advances have not happened at the rate predicted when banks and asset managers first came together to declare collective action in 2021.

"The knowledge we had in 2021 on what was achievable ... has been very different than where we are today," Shargiil Bashir, chief sustainability officer and executive vice president at First Abu Dhabi Bank, told my colleague Virginia Furness. You can read her coverage via this link.

Company news

An ongoing U.S. antitrust trial in Washington so far has shown how Meta META.O CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off popular photo-sharing app Instagram in 2018 over concerns about the growing risk of regulatory scrutiny.

U.S. tariffs and strict European Union emissions standards threaten the auto industry, Stellantis STLAM.MI Chairman John Elkann said on Tuesday.

A new list shows the Trump administration exempted 47 companies from regulations to curb the amount of mercury and other toxic emissions from their coal-fired power plans for two years. Our story is here.

On my radar

Harvard rejected Trump administration demands for sweeping changes that the university said would cede too much control, leading to a freeze of $2.3 billion in federal funding and a threat by Trump to end the school's tax-exempt status.

A backlash is forming at law firms that made concessions to Trump, with some of their own lawyers saying the firms compromised too much to avoid a showdown with the administration.

Well-known JPMorgan JPM.N investment strategist Michael Cembalest said he has not been able to fully express his views on the impact of U.S. tariffs, worried about how they would be received "at a time when people are being held accountable for their views and the things that they say in ways that they probably shouldn't be."