By Virginia Furness and Sinead Cruise
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Standard Chartered is set to book almost $1 billion in income in 2025 from business geared towards helping clients meet sustainability goals, CEO Bill Winters told executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, as he doubled down on supporting the net-zero agenda.
The UK lender, which has pledged to mobilise $300 billion in green and sustainable financing by 2030, has taken a leading role in global climate finance efforts and will continue to do so despite the election of climate sceptic Donald Trump as U.S. president and amid increasing pressure on banks, Winters said.
“It’s a big business for us,” he said. “A couple of years ago we gave the guidance externally we’d make a billion dollars of income by 2026 and we’ll be pretty close to that in 2025.”
“It’s a profitable business, so I don’t want to sound too mercantilist about it, but we do the right thing, and we get paid for it,” he added. “It’s kind of win, win.”
Winters acknowledged anti-ESG sentiment in the U.S. added pressure to companies and businesses, but said banks and large oil-producing countries elsewhere had yet to reverse broad support for the transition to a net-zero economy.
“In the long run it is pretty clear we need to disgorge ourselves from fossil fuels,” he said.
Efforts to foster climate action in the financial industry have been hampered in recent weeks after U.S. and Canadian banks left a U.N.-backed banking alliance amid Republican pressure.
Standard Chartered remains a member of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a spokesperson said on Monday, but is continuing to “monitor evolving dynamics closely”.
Winters’ comments came hours after Trump took office, declaring an energy emergency and committing to boost U.S. oil and gas production as he initiated a series of roll-backs on green policies.
Regardless of politics, favourable economics drove a clean energy boom during Trump’s first term, with Republican stronghold Texas leading record-high U.S. solar and wind energy expansion in 2020, U.S. government data show.
(Reporting by Sinead Cruise and Virginia Furness; Editing by Jan Harvey)
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