Climate change cannot be tackled in isolation. Biodiversity is an equally important challenge, and the two must be considered in tandem. A new report backed by Singapore’s Temasek spells out the challenge and the opportunity.

Want to know what banks will be doing at COP26? Give them a minute and they’ll get back to you…

Credit Suisse’s chief sustainability officer is no ESG ideologue. She is at heart a hard-nosed investment banker who sees a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to guide clients to a more sustainable future.

South African banks’ sustainable finance challenges reflect the nation’s difficult but vital transition away from coal.

Macquarie Group chief executive Shemara Wikramanayake has laid out her bank’s ambitions in green energy, as its Green Investment Group reports a record portfolio.

A year after launch, the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets is close to setting standards for a murky market. Board member Chris Leeds discusses the journey so far, the challenges ahead and the opportunities that standardization could create for banks.

Annual stress tests of bank balance sheets were one of the last decade’s most obvious supervisory responses to the global financial crisis. With a wave of new bottom-up assessments now getting under way, regulators hope to do something similar with climate risks. Can they do it or will this simply result in a toothless box-ticking exercise?

Derivatives could turbocharge environmental, social and governance markets, with a related boost to bank revenues. However, they could also make it harder to monitor exposure.

Gas price volatility is delivering profits to speculators. It is a reminder that carbon trading markets could face PR problems if energy dealers are viewed as big beneficiaries.

The rising price of oil and gas in this recovery underlines the need for much greater investment in clean energy.

Many initiatives have promised to crowd in private capital through the catalytic effect of their own seed investment. Will this one work?

James Gifford’s life changed when he hopped aboard a flight from Sydney in 2003. The team he joined in Geneva framed the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment, created the concept of ‘ESG’ and changed the world.

The world has been pressuring Brazil about the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest within its borders for decades. New ESG-style initiatives are being adopted by Brazilian banks and businesses, but it could be the climate impact closer to home that’s creating the impetus for real change.

Investors must understand the limits of regulatory efforts to measure climate stress at banks.

Gustavo Montezano has been president of BNDES since July 2019. He is on a mission to get Brazil’s state development bank to adapt to the new financial reality of ESG. How the resultant tensions play out will be crucial to the development of Brazil and the world.

Can multilateral development banks fight climate change while still promoting economic development in emerging markets? The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is the first to set out concrete plans on how to do this.

China faces tough choices in the months ahead. Make the right decisions and it can become the global leader in ESG, a country determined to shed its industrial past and embrace a cleaner, greener future.

Australia is not the first country that comes to mind with regards to climate action. But away from the political rhetoric, the exceptionally powerful superannuation funds and corporates are pushing change. The key is an acceptance that in Australia it’s all about transition.

Brazil’s central bank attempts to redress the country’s woeful environmental reputation with climate-related stress tests.

DBS is the world’s best bank and Morgan Stanley is the world’s best investment bank in Euromoney’s 2021 Awards for Excellence. New awards recognise financial innovation and the growing importance of ESG in banking.

The Singapore-based lender has established a new benchmark for SME banking

A flurry of new services, including DBS Digital Exchange and Climate Impact X, have kept the Singaporean lender in pole position.

The French bank’s innovative and collaborative approach to data is central to its sustainable finance strategy.

It’s a sign of a well-run bank when it not only survives a pandemic largely unscathed but uses it as an opportunity to gain ground. Characteristically, DBS’s Piyush Gupta not only kept the bank on course but used the crisis to make two potentially transformative acquisitions, launch two new exchanges and think afresh about what banking should look like.

In a year when the race to net zero really got under way, biodiversity protection rose to the top of the agenda and Covid exacerbated the need for social support, one bank stood out for innovation, breadth of coverage and rigorous use of data

The great financial innovator shone again in global wealth management.

In a tough year, quality and quantity mattered to the public sector. BNP Paribas offered both.

The US bank has turned pandemic-inspired strategic conversations with companies into mandates.

A full range of best-in-class products, strong advisory capabilities and global reach are more important than ever in post-pandemic corporate banking.

The bank is keen to get started on taking the tough decisions needed to achieve net zero.