Environment law NGO ClientEarth has filed a complaint against asset management giant BlackRock with France’s financial markets authority for allegedly misnaming multiple retail investment funds as “sustainable.” In its complaint to the French regulator, the AMF, ClientEarth said 18 of BlackRock’s actively managed retail investment funds provided in France included the term “sustainable” in their names but “each of the target funds has material exposure to fossil fuel companies that are developing new fossil fuel projects or capacity; and/or are not phasing out fossil fuel production consistently with the Paris Agreement temperature goals.” Retail investment funds include mutual funds designed for individual investors. “Recent research has confirmed that greenwashing is rife among ‘sustainable’ investment funds marketed in Europe — funds which despite their name are heavily exposed to fossil fuel expansion,” ClientEarth lawyer Robert Clarke told Mongabay in an email. “This is undoubtedly a systemic issue for the integrity of financial markets in the EU and globally, but it also raises legal issues for specific investment funds and their management companies.” Twelve of BlackRock’s funds hold investments in one or more of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, such as TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Eni, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Equinor, according to ClientEarth’s complaint. “Their development activities make these companies some of the most climate-damaging in the world,” it said. ClientEarth noted that two of BlackRock’s funds, the BGF Sustainable Global Infrastructure Fund and the BGF Sustainable Energy Fund, are in breach of the European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation requirements.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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