Bank investments in nuclear weapons

Corporate investments in nuclear weapons

The report found that 325 financial institutions had provided financing of $748 billion to the top 18 nuclear weapons producers between January 2017 and January 2019.  The financing provided by the institutions could be loans, investment banking or ownership of more than 0.5% of the shares of at least one of the producing companies.

21 of these finance companies appear in our banking shopping guides and thereby received a half mark in the Arms & Military Supply category. See the Hall of Shame table below for how much money they are providing.

More than half of all investments were made by ten financial institutions, two of which appear in our banking guides:

• Blackrock was the second biggest investor of all the 325 institutions. It invested 61,200 million in 2019, up $30,781 million on the previous year,. Blackrock owns 10% of the Janus Henderson ethical investment fund.

• Citigroup appears in the ethical bank account and ethical savings account guides as Citibank. Citigroup invested a total of $17,017 million in 2019, $500 million up on its previous year’s figure.

Nuclear weapons have been prohibited by a UN treaty since 2017. 82 states have signed the treaty and as of October 2020, 50 have ratified it, meaning it will come into effect in January 2021.

Logically banks and pension funds should now apply the same exclusion and disinvestment policies to nuclear weapons that they use for cluster munition and landmines. To help you show customer demand for this, the UK Nuclear Weapons Financing Research Group have a set of template letters for customers to send to major UK banks and pension providers.

While states and civil society are turning away from the most destructive weapons ever created, these companies are helping the nine countries which still own nuclear weapons, and another 30 so-called nuclear umbrella states, to keep the use of nuclear weapons as part of their security strategies.

Hall of Fame

However, there also appears to be a growing number of financial institutions which are choosing not to fund the nuclear weapons industry. 36 institutions (up from 22 in the 2018 report) were listed in the Report’s ‘Hall of Fame’ for having a comprehensive policy that excluded all types of investments in nuclear weapons companies (withdrawing past investments and avoiding future investments).

Triodos and The Co-operative Bank were included.

Triodos is super transparent and publishes all its investments on it s website. Co-op Bank does not and unfortunately, despite its own policies, it is 12% owned by Invesco, a company that does finance nuclear weapons.

Hall of Shame: Banks that help finance nuclear weapons companies

(Ranked by total finance made available to nuclear weapons companies)

Three of the 18 nuclear weapons producing companies

Serco (UK) is part of the joint venture AWE-ML, which runs the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment which is responsible for manufacturing and maintaining Trident nuclear warheads for the UK arsenal, as well as developing the new nuclear warhead, Mark4A. At the time of writing, it was also handling the UK’s COVID track and trace system.

BAE Systems (UK) is involved in the nuclear weapons programmes of France, the UK and the US. It produces key components for Trident II (D5) missiles for the US and UK nuclear arsenals. It also produces US Minuteman III nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missile systems. BAE Systems is also part of the MBDA joint venture and provides nuclear armed air-to-surface missiles for France.

Boeing (USA) is contracted to help keep the Minuteman III missiles operational in the US nuclear arsenal until 2030.
Boeing will also be producing its replacement, the new Ground Based Strategic Deterrent system for the US, as well as the guided tail kit for the new B61-12 US nuclear gravity bomb.