New York State Common Retirement Fund, Albany, announced its support for shareholder resolutions asking six large financial institutions to halt financing of new fossil fuel projects.
The non-binding resolutions were filed over several months for consideration at the upcoming annual meetings of Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.
The boards of each company have asked shareholders to oppose the resolutions, saying, among other things, that the proposals are unnecessary given the companies' environmental policies or that the proposals fail to account for the complexity of reducing carbon emissions, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents.
The shareholder resolutions have been filed either separately or in some form of collaboration by the Sierra Club Foundation, Trillium Asset Management, Harrington Asset Management and Boston Common Asset Management.
The $279.7 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund pledged its support Tuesday by filing an exempt solicitation with the SEC, declaring its support for the resolutions at each company. When a shareholder writes to other shareholders requesting their votes on a specific resolution, the shareholder must file an exempt solicitation with the SEC.
"Financial institutions have a key role to play in de-carbonizing the global economy and addressing the systemic risks posed by climate change," the pension fund wrote in the document filed with the SEC. "All of these financial institutions have made net-zero commitments … but to ensure that those commitments are credible, they need to adopt policies that eliminate financing of new fossil fuel exploration and development."
