Fossil fuel companies raise money through a mix of equity and debt. Large companies usually raise equity by selling shares, and the London Stock Exchange is one of the world’s leading share trading venues. The money mostly comes from ordinary people, but we have little say in the decision of fund managers to invest our pensions, insurance revenues and savings in extractive industries.
The financial sector views fossil fuels as a reliable bet, and is betting on the UK government doing little to curb our oil, gas and coal addiction. With tax breaks of over £1 billion to North Sea oil, and new carbon reporting rules that don’t even ask financiers to count the impact of their investments, it has not been disappointed.
This booklet looks at how the City of London organises the fossil fuel investments for destructive fossil fuel projects that are leading to runaway climate change, and asks what we can do to stop it. Its aim is to inform campaigners and equip them to take action.
Carbon Capital booklet references
6. Profundo, UK Involvement in Controversial Energy Projects in the South (London: WDM, 2013)
9. TheCityUK, Fund Management (London: TheCityUK, 2012).
10. The "random walk" hypothesis was most fully articulated by Malkiel, Burton, A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing (New York: Norton, 2007)
12. BlackRock, ‘Charinco, Charishare and Charishare Restricted Common Investment Funds. Interim Report. 1 December 2011 to 31 May 2012 ’ (London: BlackRock, 2012)
15. Schücking et al., Bankrolling Climate Change.
16.
Mel Evans et al., Cashing in on Tar Sands: RBS, UK Banks and Canada’s ‘blood Oil’ (BankTrack, Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign, Friends of the Earth Europe, Friends of the Earth Scotland, New Internationalist, People & Planet, Piplinks, Platform, Rainforest Action Network and World Development Movement, 2010),
http://www.wdm.org.uk/cashing-tar-sands-rbs-uk-banks-and-canada%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cblood-oil%E2%80%9D18. TheCityUK, Banking. May 2012 (London: TheCityUK, 2012).
19.
IntercontinentalExchange, ‘ICE Reports Record Futures Volume in 2012 on 10% ADV Growth’, 3 January,
http://ir.theice.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=731304 Own calculations based on ‘average daily volume’ of 620,373 contracts x 1000 barrels per contract x £71.29 (US$112 per barrel) average Brent Crude price 2012 x 252 trading days.
Illustrations
Shell
Sources:
Royal Dutch Shell, Building an Energy Future: Annual Report 2011 (The Hague: Royal Dutch Shell plc, 2012).
Mel Evans, Anna Galkina, James Marriott, Mika Minio-Paluello, Sarah Shoraka and Kevin Smith,
Carbon Bubble
Sources:
Investment flowchart (centre spread)
Sources:
Office of National Statistics, Ownership of UK listed Shares 2010, 28 February (London: ONS, 2012),
Commodities
Sources: