Citigroup Inc. C 0.61% Chief Executive Jane Fraser, speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit Tuesday, said the bank will have to cut off some clients to meet its climate goals.
Ms. Fraser said the bank is going industry by industry to determine how to fulfill a pledge she made on her first day as CEO in March to have its entire financing portfolio achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The bank has said it would release the plans and goal posts in the next year.
Citigroup will first outline its plans for how to respond to clients in the energy industry. The bank will consider the project the client is launching, the commitments the client has made to greening itself and how important the client is to Citigroup.
“At the end of the day that will mean there are some choices as to which clients we will be serving and which ones we won’t be,” Ms. Fraser said. “One-size-fits-all won’t work for that.”
She also said that ramping up financing to companies that can help the clean-energy transition is just as important for the bank, reiterating pledges it has made to devote $1 trillion in financing toward the effort.
Ms. Fraser said success would require the rest of the world to come to agreement on disclosures.
“It will be a lot easier when we have disclosures that are apples to apples,” she said. “Right now it is a bit of a fruit basket for disclosure regimes.”
Write to David Benoit at [email protected]
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