DanWatch, a Danish independent non-profit media and research center, has reported that the Stockholm-based financial services group, Nordea, will remove food commodities from their financial products.
Nordea, a Stockholm-based financial services company, is Denmark’s largest provider of index based financial products in commodities.
When DanWatch and Tænk Penge in August 2011 inquired Nordea about the bank’s position on food speculation, the bank was conducting an analysis and was awaiting a conclusion later that year.
Now the bank is ready with a position.
”In the latter half of 2011, Nordea decided no longer to offer this type of financial product for our customers,” says Klaus Fridorf, Director of Responsible Investment & Governance at Nordea.
Nordea’s position has just been conveyed in the bank’s annual report on responsible investments, published in March 2012.
”Our decision is based on a number of international analyses which show a correlation between increased speculation and volatile (and record high) food commodity prices,” says Klaus Fridorf from Nordea.
Nordea’s bonds, which DanWatch has been investigating, are based on the world market prices of wheat, maize, among other crops, and expire in 2013. But already now Nordea says that the bank will not anymore offer customers this type of investment product that has basic foodstuffs as its underlying assets.
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Several other European banks have announced that they will end their speculation in food commodities. Read coverage by The World Development Movement (WDM).