Asset managers must do more to tackle climate crisis, report warns

REBECCA SPEARE-COLE

MAJOR asset managers must do more to safeguard the world’s ecosystems and tackle the climate crisis, campaigners have warned.

A report from Shareaction, which campaigns for responsible invest- ment, assessed 77 of the largest asset managers in the world, including UK firms like Legal & General, HSBC, Aviva, Fidelity and Schroders. It said only 10 asset managers – all in Europe – had committed to restrict investment in the most harmful fossil fuels across all their funds.

The FTSE 250 bank, which specialises in providing finance to buy-to-let landlords and SMEs, had a solid 2022 and looks set to repeat the strong performances of other major UK lenders when it reports its halfyear results on Tuesday.

Domestically-focused banks in the FTSE 100 beat expectations with their results for the first quarter, although some signalled more difficult times ahead.

“The Big Five are predicting a ‘normalisation’ of loan losses for this year and it will be interesting to see if Paragon does the same,” AJ Bell’s Russ Mould said.

However, Paragon takes a fairly conservative approach to lending and so investors expect it to be well insulated from any problems that do emerge.

Mould also pointed out that “the bank is well capitalised and currently confident enough to be running a share buyback”.