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The Co-operative Bank unveiled its new “ethical investment” policy yesterday, with campaigners claiming victory over its new investor bosses.
A refusal to invest in firms such as arms dealers, labour rights abusers, cosmetics testers on animals and fossil fuel firms has been retained.
But the policy has been extended to reject investment in firms which dodge taxes, payday loans firms and companies whose activities “seriously contribute to the degradation of endangered species’ habitats.”
The bank has also committed itself to becoming a living-wage employer.
Fears for the bank’s ethical investment policy arose after it hit financial trouble in June 2013, revealing a £1.5 billion deficit attributed mainly to the bank’s 2009 merger with Britannia building society.
The bank was bailed out by investment financiers who took 80 per cent control.
Customers banded together to form a Save Our Bank campaign and 10,000 voiced concerns that the takeover should not mean the end of the ethical investment policy.
Yesterday, the team which led the campaign said in a statement: “When the bank’s ethics survey didn’t include all of the old ethical policy statements, we wrote to them and pointed out what was missing. All those missing statements are included.”
The team now plan to form a “customers’ union” to work with employees’ unions “to work together to build a growing co-operative ownership stake.”
