Australia’s largest investment bank will be in activists’ sights when shareholders gather at its global headquarters for its annual general meeting.
Environmental group Market Forces plans to have a four-metre-tall mock gas flare outside Macquarie Group’s new Martin Place offices in Sydney on Thursday morning, representing the bank’s financing of climate pollution.
At the meeting Macquarie faces its first climate-focused shareholder resolution calling on the $86 billion company to outline how its financing for fossil fuel projects is aligned with its net-zero commitments.
Activists say they’re concerned about Macquarie’s commitment to global climate goals after the bank followed US peers JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America in exiting the Net Zero Banking Alliance in February, not long after President Donald Trump took office.
Macquarie has more than doubled its financing for oil and gas in the past two years, Market Forces says.
“Macquarie’s reputation as a green financial institution is completely at odds with its investments in one of Australia’s biggest new gas developments,” said Market Forces policy analyst Morgan Pickett, referring to its financing of a $100 million gas fracking project in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin.
Macquarie in late 2024 provided the funding for two of the gas companies most active in the Basin, Beetaloo Energy Australia and Tamboran Resources.
Australia’s Department of Industry, Science and Resources says Beetaloo has the potential to rival the world’s best gas projects, and developing it could create thousands of jobs and drive significant economic growth in the territory.
Activists say moving ahead with another gas project is irresponsible as the planet tips further into a climate emergency.
“As a climate scientist, I’m appalled that Macquarie Group is claiming to be green yet is lending to companies blasting ahead with new gas projects adding to irreversible global warming,” Lesley Hughes, climate change scientist and emerita professor of biology, said in a statement provided by Market Forces.
Macquarie is recommending shareholders reject the climate resolution, which asks the bank to disclose its exposure to fossil fuel companies and detail its approach for funding them in light of its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.
Macquarie says the science behind climate change is “clear and unequivocal” but it believes in “a managed, orderly and just transition”.
“This means supporting carbon-intensive industries and companies including those in the oil/gas, electricity, agriculture, mining, transport and waste sectors to decarbonise, while protecting the vital services and jobs that our communities rely on,” Macquarie said.
Market Forces says four global investors have backed the shareholder resolution: the pension funds of New York City, the UK’s Church of England and the largest private pension fund in Norway, as well as Melbourne-based fund manager ELM Responsible Investments.
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