Date: 2024-04-20 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00021545
COMPANIES
AXA
The insurance company AXA wants to insure Brazil’s massive offshore oil expansion -- and still call itself a “climate leader”.
AXA
The insurance company AXA wants to insure Brazil’s massive offshore oil expansion -- and still call itself a “climate leader”.
Burgess COMMENTARY
The profit performance of big companies has been very strong in recent years. There was weakness at the end of the Reagan administration, again at the end of the Bush (45) administration and in some sectors at the end of the Trump admnistration caused by Covid ... but taken as a whole profits and stock markets are at very high record levels.
I have argued for years that this is possible because of the financialization of the modern world. In the casino of modern finance, the gaming is rigged and this suits all the big players. I learned something of the Harvard Business School in the late 1960s. The company I worked for back ... Aerosol Techniques Inc (ATI) then was using an HBS based contulting firm, Management Analysis Center (MAC) to advise on the modernization of its management systems and the installation of an IBM computer. The first attempt at doing this had not been successful and I was recruited to help reporting directly to the CFO. By then I was 28 years old, but already had some real world corporate experience ... certainly a lot relative to the recently graduated Harcard MBAs who were 5 years younger! Already there were signs that the maximization of profit could be managed without having to pay attention to all the real world impacts. My work with ATI and MAC was a success and I believe some of the work was used in HBS case studies. MAC had something in common with another HBS base consulting firm Bain & Co but nothing at all in common with Bain Capital that emerged later.
Later in my career I was the CFO of a company that operated in the (shrimp) fishing industry around the world. I think we operated in 27 different legal jurisdictions and were subject to all sort of laws and regulations. The need for insurance was very real but the cost of premiums outrageous relative to the true risks, in large part because the big insurance companies had little incentive to actually understand our risks. We were too small to get their top experts and the less experienced staff were not really very good. Our company solved this problem by establishing our own insurance subsidiary (in Bermuda) and in the process got a lot better risk coverage at a much lower cost.
The insurance industry is an essential part of big business, and throughly involved in getting benefit from financialization in the short run. Much of the insurance industry has a certain amount of prtection from reality by the way in which its operations are allowed or constrained by laws. While the scale of the modern insurance industry is huge, the industry is only huge relative to past and present risks. Whether or not the industry has the scale to handle the existential risks that are emerging because of large scale environmental and social disruption, I don't know, but everything suggests to me that it does not!
Peter Burgess
Leyla Larbi, SumOfUs
SumOfUs is a community of people from around the world committed to curbing the growing power of corporations. We want to buy from, work for and invest in companies that respect the environment, treat their workers well and respect democracy. And we’re not afraid to stand up to them when they don’t.
January 21, 2022 7:58 AM
AXA wants to insure Brazil’s massive offshore oil expansion -- and still call itself a “climate leader”.
The insurance giant is finding gaps in its own “green” commitments to help drill this Great Amazon Reef. Can you call on AXA to pull out of disastrous oil and gas projects?
Peter,
Blue whales, coral reefs, rare dolphins… the Amazonian coast in Brazil sounds idyllic doesn’t it? But to AXA, it’s destruction is just another money making scheme.
A bombshell report has just revealed how the French insurer has been finding gaps in its own 'green' fossil fuel policy -- to insure exploratory oil and gas operations in what’s been called “the Great Amazon Reef”.
You helped force AXA to adopt its landmark oil and gas policy last year. But it appears their policy is still far too weak, too flimsy, and hypocritical, leaving the door open for more climate-killing oil and gas exploitation.
Peter, nightmare oil expansion can’t go ahead without insurance. If we raise a huge, global outcry today -- we can call out AXA’s climate hypocrisy, and make oil and gas drilling in places like the Amazon totally uninsurable.
AXA: honor your self-proclaimed climate leadership. Stop all new oil and gas expansion!
AXA was hailed as a leader on climate at COP26 last year when it adopted its new progressive oil and gas policy. Nevertheless, hidden beneath the waters of Brazil's western Amazonian coast, the insurer is continuing to insure dirty fossil fuel companies who are intent on ravaging precious ecosystems for petrodollar profits.
Brazil’s Atlantic coastlines are some of the world's richest in terms of biodiversity, home to many critically endangered species, such as manatees, dolphins, whales, and sea turtles. But underlying this landscape are massive reserves of oil and gas that have become juicy targets for planet-wrecking companies. And this new report shows AXA is all too keen to insure them, all the while touting its 'progressive' oil and gas policy.
But Peter, you’ve pushed AXA to do better for the planet before. So you can do it again.
With our friends at Reclaim Finance and Insure Our Future, we’re telling AXA to put its money where its mouth is by ending financial ties to these projects, and close the loopholes in its flimsy green policies.
Will you join us again, Peter?
AXA: don’t insure oil and gas drilling in the Great Amazon Reef, or anywhere!
Thanks for all that you do,
Leyla, Charles and the team at SumOfUs
This email was sent to peterbnyc@gmail.com.
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More information
Full Report: Fuelling Climate Change:The Insurers Behind Brazil’s Offshore Oil Expansion
Insure Our Future, 20 January 2022
Insurers Behind Brazil Oil Press Release
Insure Our Future, 20 January 2022
Documents Reveal Insurers Backing Massive Offshore Oil Expansion in Brazil
Reclaim Finance, 20 Janaury 2022
Oil, fisheries and coastal communities
Nathan Andrews, May 2021
Axa’s New Oil And Gas Policy: Glass 44% Full Or 56% Empty?
Insure Our Future, 29 October 2021