Top finance brass: City grandees need to show off green stripes to rake in bonuses

City grandees will need to show off their green stripes to rake in bumper bonuses, some of the finance industry’s top brass said today.

The chief of one Britain’s biggest banks, part state-owned NatWest, sent a warning shot to the bank’s top dogs that their environmental track record will be considered when awarding bonuses.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Alison Rose said the bank’s contribution and progress toward “climate transition” so they can show “our customers and our shareholders what we are doing and how we are doing it.”

“We’ve made climate a key part of our strategy. We’ve set very clear targets.”

“Climate transition and our targets are a key part of our executive remuneration,” Rose added.

The warning comes as Chancellor Rishi Sunak outlined plans to force financial institutions and listed firms to publish strategies on how they are progressing toward net-zero by 2050.

Sunak at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow said the world was pushing to “rewire the global financial system for net-zero”.

The Chancellor also announced $120 trillion – around 40 per cent of the world’s stock of assets – of capital had been pledged from 450 members of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero, an initiative led by former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney.