Shh! The Monster Banker Funds are secretly saving the World
By sheer coincidence the same day the Australian Treasurer said we’d have to pump up the subsidies on climate targets, a group of largely foreign bankers called for the Australian government to “hurry up with emissions reduction plans “.
The foreign investment bankers market themselves as “Australian and New Zealand investors” but boast they have $30 trillion in assets, which is a bit of a red flag when the GDP of both nations together is $2 trillion USD. It turns out the blandly named Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) is only 10% Australasian:
IGCC represents investors with total funds under management of more than $3 trillion in Australia and New Zealand and $30 trillion around the world. Investors welcome the development of internationally aligned climate risk disclosure requirements in Australia. —IGCC Submission to the Australian Treasury Feb 2023
But being 90% foreign doesn’t stop them putting in submissions to Parliament or pretending to be locals. Even The Australian thinks they are Australian:
An Australian investor group representing members with more than $30 trillion in assets says plans being developed by the Albanese government to decarbonise sectors like energy and agriculture must align to the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5C.
The fund includes Australia’s largest retirement funds, but quietly also includes our old friends, Vanguard and BlackRock, which together make up $17 trillion of the $30 trillion dollar collective of climate concern. So it’s the two supergiants, plus 100 extras. Who controls this group? It’s not the minnows.
Bankers use your pension funds to make your electricity bill higher
The IGCC says it’s just worried about their clients best returns, as indeed they should be. But given the S&P Global Clean Energy Index is down by 36% this year, their clients best returns would have been in the real Energy Sector which hasn’t gone down at all. If they were serving their clients they would invest in oil and gas. But instead the bankers apparently want the government to rescue their bad investments. Here’s their joint plea for “certainty” which means certain subsidies:
In a new report released by the Investor Group on Climate Change – which represents Australia’s largest superannuation and retail funds, specialist investors and advisory groups – investors outline their priorities for the government’s decarbonisation plans to ensure the country remains a competitive place to direct capital during the net-zero transition.
“Unless Australia’s economy decarbonises in a manner that is rapid, orderly, and fair, the long-term retirement savings of millions of its citizens will be negatively impacted. [Not to mention all the foreign investors too, says Jo].
“The more orderly the transition to net zero, the better able investors will be to protect and preserve the value of their investments in the best interest of their beneficiaries.”
Given that “profits” from unreliable energy transitions depend entirely on government subsidies and laws, these giant funds are colluding together to lobby for better returns. But if they didn’t ask their 7.5 million Australian and New Zealand customers whether they want smaller retirement funds in order to save the world — then are they really serving them, or screwing them?
$30 trillion dollars is a lot of money to use to threaten and influence a $2 trillion dollar economy. Are the foreign bankers using the threat of withdrawing investments in order to bully more subsidies out of patsy Australian taxpayers and hapless Australian electricity consumers? They could feed the “profits” back to their own retirement funds overseas, while they boost wind and solar manufacturers in China, say, to get more favours with President Xi — the possibilities are endless. One arm of a supergiant fund can rake in the money created through predatory behaviour in another arm.
Or perhaps I’m wrong, and the saintly bankers genuinely lie in bed at night worrying about a half a degree of global warming.
These are the groups concerned about koalas and corals
Members of IGCC:
Follow the money — the Greens do.