Finance
France’s Biggest Insurer Dumps German Power Giant Over Coal
The decision is precedent-setting for the insurance industry.
Photographer: Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
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Axa SA, France’s biggest insurer, is dropping German energy giant RWE AG as a client in a decision that highlights how taboo the coal business has become.
Not even an appeal from RWE Chief Executive Officer Rolf Martin Schmitz to his counterpart at Axa, Thomas Buberl, was enough to persuade the insurer to retreat from its conviction that the utility’s coal operations are too large and it’s moving too slowly to shrink its carbon footprint, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who declined to be identified.