Led by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, Tennessee and 17 states announced today the conclusion of their investigation into Wells Fargo & Company following the company’s decision to abandon certain Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies.
“Companies exist to make money, not policy. When giant corporations collude to limit consumer choice, they deprive Americans of the accountability and transparency that comes from representative government,” said Attorney General Skrmetti. “I commend Wells Fargo’s pro-consumer decision to step away from utopian policymaking, and I look forward to the rest of America’s major financial institutions following its lead.”
The coalition has been investigating whether Wells Fargo and five other American banks—Bank of America Corporation; Citigroup Inc.; The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.; JPMorgan Chase & Co.; and Morgan Stanley—violated antitrust or consumer protection laws by implementing net-zero emissions policies and restricting financing. By joining initiatives like the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, which required member banks to align their portfolios to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and set specific targets for “carbon-intensive sectors” by 2030, these banks potentially compromised their fiduciary obligations to customers and investors and simultaneously usurped the policy-making authority of America’s elected representatives.
Recently, Wells Fargo announced that it was ending its membership in the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. Wells Fargo further announced that it was “discontinuing our sector-specific 2030 interim financed emissions targets and our goal to achieve net zero by 2050 for financed emissions.” While other banks have also recently ended their Net-Zero Banking Alliance memberships, only Wells Fargo has publicly ended the ESG goals mandated by the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The Office of the Tennessee Attorney General will continue to lead the coalition’s investigation into the other five banks.
Tennessee Attorney General Skrmetti is joined in the announcement by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
