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The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a collaboration of 385 institutional investors with assets under management of US $57 trillion, today announced a three-year global partnership with Merrill Lynch & Co, Inc.
CDP is the world's largest investor collaboration on climate change. Each year it sends out a request to over 3,000 companies globally on behalf of investors including Merrill Lynch, AXA, Allianz, ANZ, Banco do Brazil, Mitsubishi UFJ, AIG Investments, The RBS Group and HSBC.
The request asks companies to measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and report on their strategy for dealing with risks and opportunities associated with climate change.
As a global partner, Merrill Lynch will play a key role in supporting CDP's development and growth worldwide over the next three years. Merrill Lynch's global reach will be invaluable in consolidating CDP operations in current regions, such as the USA and the UK and in launching in new regions such as China and Korea. It will also help increase focus on the vital role that investors play in driving financial flows into low-carbon solutions.
Carbon Disclosure Project CEO, Paul Dickinson: 'This global partnership will help CDP to build on its current success in creating a unified business response to climate change. As regulations on greenhouse gas emissions tighten, CDP data will become increasingly useful to help guide investment models. We hope other leading global institutions will follow Merrill Lynch's lead in working with CDP as part of a Consortium of Global Partners.'
CDP will benefit from Merrill Lynch's expertise in capital markets, carbon trading, investment banking and advisory services to accelerate the collection and disclosure of key corporate climate change data from more and more companies. It will also play an important part in enabling CDP to pursue new projects to expand the CDP reach and to raise awareness of the importance of corporate climate change reporting and accounting.
Merrill Lynch President and COO, Greg Fleming: 'As a founding partner of CDP, Merrill Lynch is proud to support the expansion of this critical and unique organization. CDP is the gold standard for carbon disclosure methodology and we are proud to partner with them as we pursue environmental excellence for our firm and our clients.'
Merrill Lynch Managing Director & Global Head of Carbon Emissions, Abyd Karmali: 'CDP has been instrumental in creating a constructive dialogue between companies and the financial markets on new opportunities and risks posed by climate change. Importantly it has also promoted continuous improvement in corporate reporting on carbon emissions which has been valuable to Merrill Lynch in developing new carbon-related investment products. For example, CDP data were instrumental for Merrill Lynch in launching our Capital Protected Carbon Leaders Europe Index Certificate in 2007.'
