Commerzbank has formed a reputation and sustainability management team
as part of efforts to improve its social and environmental performance.
The three-person team will be responsible for CSR throughout the
Frankfurt-based bank, one of Europe’s largest. Situated within the
bank’s communications unit, it will draw up a CSR strategy for the
whole company. With support from managers in various departments, it
will run working groups and workshops on corporate responsibility and
hopes to produce concrete measures by the end of the year.
A review of internal rules and regulations is also under way, with a
view to producing, in the second half of the year, an ethical code of
conduct presenting a ‘clear and unequivocal commitment to CSR,
co-existence based on partnership and the sustainable development of
our business’.
In addition, the team will conduct the company’s first stakeholder
survey and align its working conditions and investments more closely
with International Labour Organization conventions. Another priority
will be to develop more employee-friendly working programmes, including
a flexi-time scheme being piloted this year.
One factor that has prompted Commerzbank to take a greater interest in
CSR has been the Lukoil affair, in which the company, as part of an
international bank consortium, granted a loan to the Russian oil group
Lukoil to build an offshore rig in the Baltic Sea.
Lukoil has been accused of failing to conduct social and environmental
impact assessments on the project and ignoring the risks of drilling
for oil in a Lithuanian nature reserve. As a result, Commerzbank has
been heavily criticized in Germany for its role in lending without due
regard for the project’s impacts. It has since held talks with
environmental and human rights groups.
Although it has, for now, decided not to become a signatory to the
Equator Principles, which guide other banks on ethical lending for
projects above £50m, it will place particular emphasis on drafting
internal environmental and social guidelines for loans.
The bank expects the CSR strategy to ‘improve risk management tools
further in order to achieve greater transparency and a better basis for
decision-making’. It also believes that the strategy will bring about
an improvement in its CSR communications.
‘Corporate responsibility is a vast topic, and the time has come for a
systematic, structured approach,’ Commerzbank told EP. ‘We also hope it
will provide us with a platform for presenting our achievements and
promoting an understanding of the values and other factors that
underpin our actions.’
Commerzbank, which has assets of €445billion ($540bn, £308bn) and made
€393million net profits in 2004, recently released its first
stand-alone corporate responsibility report, and aims to publish one
every two years. When the strategy is up and running, it will consider
having the report independently validated.
