UBS has pushed back a target to cut its greenhouse emissions to net zero by a decade, blaming its acquisition of crosstown rival Credit Suisse for the delay.
The Swiss bank revised its target to decarbonise its own operations from 2025 to 2035, according to a disclosure in its latest sustainability report published on Monday.
UBS said the delay reflected its “enlarged corporate real estate portfolio” following the state-orchestrated takeover of Credit Suisse in 2023. The bank previously said it would take a $400mn hit from real estate costs tied to its acquisition of its defunct rival.
The move comes after HSBC also pushed back its timeline to decarbonise its own operations last month, delaying its own target by 20 years to 2050.
Banks and other large companies have been reassessing their commitment to climate goals following Donald Trump’s election as US president in November.
Several Wall Street lenders, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, have quit the world’s largest climate alliance for banks in recent months.
UBS remains a member of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, whose members must commit to setting goals that align with a target to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
However, members of the group are set to vote in the coming weeks on whether to ditch the pledge and instead align with warming of up to 2C.
UBS said in its latest sustainability report that its target for cutting emissions from mortgage lending to Swiss residential and commercial real estate was based on a global scenario in which the long-term average temperature could rise up to 2C from pre-industrial levels.
Sergio Ermotti, UBS’s chief executive, had previously said the Swiss lender was weighing up whether to follow US peers and leave the NZBA.
“It’s not credible to think that you can do it at the same pace and the same extent in every single country and region in the world,” Ermotti said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.
In its latest sustainability report, UBS removed a section on the “environmental, social and governance objectives in the compensation process” that appeared in the report in previous years. The bank also said there was “no direct link between senior management compensation and specific climate goals”.
However, executives still have an “environmental and sustainability” objective as part of their non-financial performance assessment, which includes “supporting clients’ activities related to the environment and sustainability”.
The bank said the delay to its net zero target also reflected the “latest regulatory guidance”.
UBS is in the middle of a three-year integration of Credit Suisse, which involves migrating clients and integrating IT systems, a process that the bank expects will be completed in 2026.
UBS declined to comment.
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