By Simon Jessop
LONDON (Reuters) - Invesco on Friday became the fifth major U.S. investor to exit or scale back their involvement with the Climate Action 100+ coalition of investors, which aims to push highly polluting companies to cut their carbon emissions.
The move follows a decision by the fund arms of JPMorgan and State Street (NYSE:STT) and bond giant Pimco to leave in recent weeks, while BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) reduced its involvement with the group.
The decision of Invesco, which manages $1.6 trillion in assets, and the others to leave came as CA100+ gears up to implement Phase 2 of its engagement plan, which would see members put more pressure on companies to cut their emissions.
Coalitions such as CA100+ have been criticised by some U.S. Republican politicians as potentially being in breach of antitrust law, although in a statement last week CA100+ said it was confident this was not the case.
Despite that, and "after careful consideration", Invesco said in a statement it had "decided to withdraw from the Climate Action 100+ initiative as we believe our clients’ interests in this area are better served through our existing investor-led and client-centric issuer engagement approach".
A spokesman for CA100+ said the group continued to have the backing and support of hundreds of investors globally, including asset owners.
"This is supported by the 60 new signatories with approximately $3 trillion in AUM (assets under management) joining since the launch of phase two alone, thereby further highlighting the strong ongoing demand for investor-led climate action."