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The major bank HSBC has suspended a manager who put the consequences of climate change into perspective at a conference.
HSBC said Stuart Kirk, head of responsible investing, is off-duty while the bank investigates the case.
Company boss Noel Quinn already explained in the career network LinkedIn that Kirk's statements do not correspond to the views of the HSBC management.
Kirk gave a talk entitled "Why Investors Shouldn't Worry About Climate Change" at a conference in London last week.
According to a report in the »Financial Times«, he scoffed that there was »always some crazy person who tells me about the end of the world«.
According to a presentation by Kirk, "unfounded, strident, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings" are "always wrong."
Kirk is said to have accused the UN and the British central bank of exaggerating the financial risks of climate change.
He said, "Who cares if Miami is twenty feet below sea level in a hundred years?
Amsterdam has been six meters below sea level for ages and it's a really nice place.«
hey/AFP
