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By Simon Jessop
LONDON (Reuters) – Invesco became the fifth major U.S. investor on Friday to exit or scale back its involvement in the Climate Action 100+ investor coalition, which aims to push highly polluting companies to reduce their carbon emissions.
The move follows a decision by JPMorgan’s fund arms and Highway (NYSE:) and bond giant Pimco have left in recent weeks, while BlackRock (NYSE:) has scaled back its involvement with the group.
The decision by Invesco, which manages $1.6 trillion in assets, and others to leave came as CA100+ prepares to implement Phase 2 of its commitment plan, which would see members put more pressure on companies to reduce own emissions.
Coalitions such as CA100+ have been criticized by some US Republican politicians as potentially violating antitrust law, although in a statement last week CA100+ said it was confident that was not the case.
Despite this, and “after careful consideration”, Invesco said in a statement that it had “decided to withdraw from the Climate Action 100+ initiative as we believe our clients’ interests in this area are best served through our existing investor- and customer-driven services approach focused on issuer engagement”.
A spokesperson for CA100+ said the group continues to have the backing and support of hundreds of investors globally, including asset owners.
“This is supported by the 60 new signatories with approximately $3 trillion in AUM (assets under management) who have signed up since the launch of phase two alone, thus further highlighting the continued strong demand for investor-led climate action.”