Banks vote to limit accounting of emissions in bond, stocks sales, Reuters says

Banks working to develop global standards on accounting for carbon emissions in bond or stock sale underwriting have voted to exclude most of these emissions from their own carbon footprint, Reuters’ Tommy Wilkes reports, citing three people familiar with the matter. The majority of banks comprising an industry working group backed a plan earlier this month to exclude two-thirds of the emissions linked to their capital markets businesses from being attributed to them in carbon accounting, the sources said, following months of discord over the issue. The majority of the banks in the working group backed the 33% threshold but at least two dissented, with one advocating for 100%, the sources said, requesting anonymity because the deliberations were confidential. The working group’s members are Morgan Stanley (MS), Barclays (BCS), Bank of America (BAC) Citigroup (C), HSBC (HSBC), BNP Paribas (BNPQY), NatWest (NWG) and Standard Chartered (SCBFF).