HSBC suspends banker over climate comments: reports

HSBC bank has suspended its head of responsible investing after he criticized climate change warnings during a recent presentation, According to media reports on Monday.

Stuart Kirk has been suspended by the London-based bank while HSBC investigates the incident first reported by the Financial Times.

Kirk reportedly told a conference held in the British capital last week that there is “always some nut job telling me about the end of the world” and is said to have shown slides stating that “unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong”.

In the presentation, entitled “Why investors need not worry about climate risk”, he is said to have accused officials at the United Nations and the Bank of England of overstating the financial risks of climate change.

“Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years? Amsterdam has been six meters underwater for ages and that’s a really nice place,” Kirk is reported to have told the Financial Times’ Moral Money conference.

While HSBC would not confirm whether Kirk had been suspended, HSBC chief executive Noel Quinn posted on LinkedIn that the comments were “inconsistent with HSBC’s strategy and do not reflect the views of the senior leadership of HSBC or HSBC Asset Management”.

“Our ambition is to be the leading bank supporting the global economy in the transition to net zero.”

HSBC and its peers have come under intense scrutiny from environmental activists for continuing to fund projects deemed harmful to the environment, such as fossil fuel exploration.

In the case of HSBC, “investors and customers should rightly question and scrutinize the bank’s climate promises, including its upcoming oil and gas policy,” according to Beau O’Sullivan, senior campaigner at activist group Bank on our Future.