‘You only go to the party if everyone is going’: finance bosses skip COP29

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The bosses of Bank of America, BlackRock, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank are among prominent financiers who are expected to skip the UN COP29 summit this year, as business expectations are lowered for the world’s most important climate negotiations.

The two-week summit in Baku in November was dubbed by its organisers as “the finance COP”, where almost 200 countries will discuss a new global financial target to support developing countries suffering the effects of climate change.

But many leading banking, asset management and insurance executives will be absent from the event which will take place just five days after the US presidential election, leaving uncertainty about the leadership of the world’s biggest economy. Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement if he wins office, as he did in 2016.

The finance executives also cited “difficult logistics” and fewer client networking opportunities than at COP28 in Dubai last year.

One finance executive, who was still weighing up whether to attend, said: “You only go to the party if everyone is going.”

Some also indicated they intended to be at COP30 in Brazil next year instead, arguing this year was a “technical COP” less suited to business.

Executives from across banking, asset management and insurance boosted the attendance at COP28 in Dubai, making it by far the largest COP with 65,000 core attendees.

That event was, conversely, criticised by some negotiators for being too big after an unprecedented number of observers and guests including business executives joined the country delegations for the first time.

The Baku COP29 organisers said at a recent briefing they expected the total attendance to be an average of the last three summits, held respectively in Glasgow, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dubai. They put the crowd estimates at 50,000, although it was not broken down and included staff.

BlackRock’s Larry Fink, who attended the summits in Glasgow and Dubai, but skipped COP27 in Egypt, is not expected to attend COP29, nor is Standard Chartered boss Bill Winters, according to people familiar with their plans.

ING chief executive Steven van Rijswijk, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and Deutsche Bank’s Christian Sewing are also not expected in Baku, according to those familiar. HSBC said it was still deciding on its delegation.

Neither the chief executive nor chair at Lloyd’s of London, the insurance institution critical to the green transition by providing risk cover to both oil and gas and clean energy developments, are planning to attend. Its chief executive John Neal was a prominent participant in previous summits.

Others said they were focused on different climate-related events, such as the COP16 UN Biodiversity Conference in Colombia that takes place later this month, or they had attended New York Climate Week in September.

Several financial institutions said their chief sustainability officers and other senior figures would attend COP29 instead.

At the same time, academics, non-profit and other organisations have complained that it was difficult to get a passes for this year’s event, as UN organisers try to rein in the crowd.

UN climate change chief Simon Stiell has said he “would certainly like to see future COPs reduce in size” after some branded them a circus that distracts from the job of negotiating a global response to climate change.

Azerbaijan’s hosting of the annual gathering has come in for scrutiny since it was chosen in rotation by the eastern European bloc of countries last year.

The petrostate, which is heavily reliant on oil and gas exports, has drawn criticism for not placing a focus on the transition away from fossil fuels that was pledged in Dubai, as well as for its human rights record.

The COP29 presidency said it was “looking forward to welcoming delegates to Baku in November” and after months of intensive planning, it had “every confidence in the venue logistics, security, accommodation and transport delivering a successful conference”.

“International businesses have expressed significant interest in the [central hub] Green Zone activities, and we expect intensive and high-quality engagement around opportunities established through COP29 daily themes,” it added.