HSBC pulls investment from Sinar Mas after Greenpeace protest
09 July 2010
HSBC has sold its shares in Sinar Mas, the Indonesian palm oil
producer accused by Greenpeace of illegal deforestation, after becoming
the latest target of the environmental NGO's anti-deforestation
protests.
The global bank is the latest in an increasingly long
list of major companies dropping the Sinar Mas group. Nestle ditched the
palm oil supplier after Greenpeace targeted its KitKat brand and Tesco
announced this week it would stop buying pulp and paper from Sinar Mas
after Greenpeace released a new
report, 'How Sinar Mas is Pulping the Planet'.
"Increasingly
household brands, supermarkets and banks are distancing themselves from
Sinar Mas' rainforest destruction," said Ian Duff, Greenpeace's forest
campaigner.
Greenpeace claims that protesters sent 10,000 emails to HSBC after the bank's connection to Sinar Mas was revealed earlier this year.
Spoof adverts, mirroring Greenpeace's viral campaign against KitKat, were also posted online.
A letter sent from HSBC to the environmental campaign group stated that the bank no longer held shares in Golden Agri-Resources - the palm oil arm of the Sinar Mas Group. Six weeks earlier HSBC had admitted in letters to Greenpeace and to the Guardian that it held shares via asset management funds including its Climate Change Fund.
HSBC has an ethical forestry policy, which states that the bank "will not finance plantations converted from natural forest since June 2004", but the rule currently does not apply to its asset management funds.
"This is
the first indication that a bank can, if they so wish, exclude specific
companies or industries. However it wasn't voluntary - it took a lot of
public pressure from Greenpeace to move HSBC," said Duff.
Late
last year, Greenpeace released a report on Sinar Mas' activities in
Indonesia, claiming that it has been selective in complying with
requirements of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, and that its
subsidiaries were flouting legal requirements in developing land for
palm oil production.
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