In October last year, Bank of America was the only major US bank to back Whitehaven Coal (along with up-and-comer investment bank Jefferies) by providing a $900 million dollar loan to Whitehaven for its acquisition of the Blackwater and Daunia mines. Today is Bank of...
Meet the new bank of choice for Australian coal miners – Jefferies Group
28 March 2024 Today is the annual general meeting of Jefferies Group, one of Whitehaven Coal’s most recent bankers. In the last few years, Jefferies has come up as a new bank of choice for other Australian coal companies in Australia. We first took note of the...
TotalEnergies’ bankers deliver major blow to Papua LNG carbon bomb
Crédit Agricole, Europe’s third largest bank, has delivered a major blow to TotalEnergies this week, declaring it will not finance Total’s proposed Papua Liquefied Natural Gas project (Papua LNG). Despite being the financial advisor to the project, and one of...
Will the funders of Santos’ Barossa project live up to their human rights commitments?
29 January 2023 Australia’s second biggest gas company, Santos, is able to proceed with its $5.7 billion offshore Barossa gas project, following a Federal Court decision earlier this month. Barossa is located in the Timor Sea north of Darwin and the Tiwi...
Big four banks make strides, but action still dangerously slow in a climate emergency
16 November 2023 All big four Australian banks have now released updated fossil fuel finance restrictions this year that have, to varying degrees, moved the dial on what they can’t finance going forward. But, like everything with the banks – the devil is in the...
NAB commits to future fossil finance restrictions, business as usual for next two years
10 November 2023 Yesterday NAB announced that from 1 October 2025 it will require the majority of fossil fuel companies to have Paris-aligned transition plans in place in order to provide additional lending. From that deadline, to get a corporate or project...
Westpac takes two steps forward, one big step back
8 November 2023 This week Westpac announced a host of new project finance restrictions for new and expanded fossil fuel projects, but also walked back a key policy that restricts finance to the companies developing them. In a disappointing regression on its...
Australian and Japanese banks receive warning to stay out of Papua LNG
Wednesday, 27 September 2023 Ahead of TotalEnergies’ Investor Day in France, Australian banks ANZ and NAB and Japanese banks MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho received letters from Market Forces, Jubilee Australia and Papua New Guinean civil society organisation CELCOR (Center...
Banks finally dump Whitehaven Coal
In a win that's been a long time coming, news broke this week that Australia's largest independent coal miner Whitehaven Coal is currently unbankable. This is a major development that further proves the effectiveness of the people-powered movement to drive finance out...
Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition must be transparent and green
OPINION | Andri Prasetiyo, Senior Researcher at Senik Centre Asia and Nabilla Gunawan, Indonesia Energy Finance Campaigner at Market Forces The Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) between Indonesia and its major trading partners is at risk of stifling...