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Your Evening Briefing

Your Evening Briefing

(Bloomberg) --

Calling out fossil fuel giants for the climate crisis may finally be yielding results, though the jury is out on whether they’re of the greenwashed variety. Climate activists have also targeted the cash behind Big Oil: Banks and asset managers are being pressured to pursue responsible investments and push companies to shrink their carbon footprint. But Wall Street money still flows to lobbyists trying to block the climate fight. So a United Nations-backed group is considering shining a light on the financial professionals themselves, which would allow institutional investors to make more informed choices. After all, if you run a pension fund that wants to go green, would you give your business to an asset manager who doesnt? 

Here are today’s top stories

Royal Bank of Scotland’s new boss is abandoning the bank’s three-century-old name and slashing its markets business.

Oracle’s Larry Ellison is holding a fundraiser for President Donald Trump. Ellison, executive chairman of the $177 billion tech company, is locked in competition with Amazon, and Trump has been vociferous in his disdain for Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, who happens to own the Washington Post.

Trump responded in muted fashion after Attorney General William Barr criticized his tweets about the Roger Stone case. Barr’s halving of the Trump ally’s sentence recommendation triggered a prosecutor revolt and heightened concern that the Justice Department’s traditional independence has been compromised. Ex-Nixon White House counsel John Dean, meanwhile, questioned the authenticity of their public rupture.

Tesla investors who got in on a Feb. 13 share sale received the steepest discount ever offered in its history as a public company.

Restaurant software firm Toast raised $400 million in its most recent fundraising round, with a valuation of $4.9 billion.

Scarce components have pushed the manufacturing costs for Sony’s next PlayStation to around $450 each.

What’s Luke Kawa thinking about? The Bloomberg cross-asset reporter proposes that  the coronavirus, while a negative for Chinese growth, isn’t the biggest threat to the country’s debt-fueled boom. If anything, Luke argues, it may be an excuse to perpetuate it as borrowing costs tumble.

What you’ll need to know tomorrow

What you’ll want to read in Bloomberg Prognosis

U.S. researchers published new images of the coronavirus that has infected tens of thousands of people in China, some of the most detailed visuals yet of the pathogen.

Your Evening Briefing

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Joshua Petri at jpetri4@bloomberg.net

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