Perles du greenwashing : comment les gestionnaires d’actifs jouent avec la réglementation

Reclaim Finance reports that asset managers are using regulatory loopholes in ESMA's fund-naming guidelines to avoid excluding fossil fuel investments while retaining ESG-related names. The organization highlights that major financial firms lobbied for less stringent criteria and warns that similar lobbying regarding the SFDR regulation could institutionalize greenwashing. Reclaim Finance demands a strict ban on investments in new fossil fuel projects for any fund claiming to be sustainable, ESG, or transition-focused.

• Asset managers are manipulating fund names to bypass ESMA's guidelines, which require funds using terms like 'environment', 'impact', or 'sustainability' to exclude the most fossil-fuel-intensive companies, but do not impose the same requirement for terms like 'transition', 'social', or 'governance'.
• An analysis of 190 funds registered in France or managed by French asset managers that changed names between May 2024 and May 2025 revealed that nearly half altered their names specifically to avoid certain regulatory constraints.
• Major financial institutions, including Amundi, BNP Paribas Asset Management, UBS, BlackRock, and JP Morgan AM, lobbied ESMA in 2022 against the widespread use of Paris Aligned Benchmark (PAB) exclusions, advocating instead for less demanding criteria for 'ESG' or 'Transition' funds.
• Reclaim Finance warns that current lobbying efforts to limit fossil fuel exclusions to a single category within the SFDR regulation revision could institutionalize greenwashing by providing a 'refuge' for companies developing new fossil fuel projects within 'ESG', 'responsible', 'transition', or 'impact' funds.

APA

Martin, L. (2025). Perles du greenwashing : comment les gestionnaires d’actifs jouent avec la réglementation. Reclaim Finance. https://reclaimfinance.org/site/2025/09/18/perles-du-greenwashing-comment-les-gestionnaires-dactifs-jouent-avec-la-reglementation/

Chicago

Martin, Léo. Perles du greenwashing : comment les gestionnaires d’actifs jouent avec la réglementation. Reclaim Finance, 2025. https://reclaimfinance.org/site/2025/09/18/perles-du-greenwashing-comment-les-gestionnaires-dactifs-jouent-avec-la-reglementation/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Martin |first1=Léo |title=Perles du greenwashing : comment les gestionnaires d’actifs jouent avec la réglementation |publisher=Reclaim Finance |date=18 September 2025 |url=https://reclaimfinance.org/site/2025/09/18/perles-du-greenwashing-comment-les-gestionnaires-dactifs-jouent-avec-la-reglementation/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{martin2025perles, author = {Martin, Léo}, title = {{Perles du greenwashing : comment les gestionnaires d’actifs jouent avec la réglementation}}, publisher = {Reclaim Finance}, year = {2025}, month = sep, url = {https://reclaimfinance.org/site/2025/09/18/perles-du-greenwashing-comment-les-gestionnaires-dactifs-jouent-avec-la-reglementation/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }