Hi ,
With Valentine's Day coming up, many bank and fossil fuel CEOs aren't feeling loved enough. They need roses, chocolates, and a great big tax break from the Chancellor according to lobby groups for the UK oil industry. They argue that "price conditions" have "returned to normal levels" (not in my energy bills they haven't, thanks), making the 38% windfall tax on excess profits a dangerous mistake. As City AM go on to note in the piece, Shell paid out £18.6bn to shareholders last year, while both BP and Shell recorded record profits in 2022 and 2023.
But even those profits aren't enough. BP's £7.9bn of profit last year has been deemed insufficient by American hedge fund Elliott Investment Management. They want changes that they hope will squeeze more profit out of BP, prompting the current management to cut thousands of jobs and, of course, cut investment in renewables to an even smaller fraction of new investment. The same story has been playing out across the energy sector: private equity investors pressuring companies to cut jobs and climate targets in order to make the numbers bigger next quarter.
Over in the banking sector, which is currently reporting annual profits for 2024, a similar theme emerges. Estimates indicate that the UK's biggest banks could report over £50bn in profit for last year, massively up from where bank profits were in 2020. However, it's not enough – so, despite CEO pay packages being bumped up to £14-£15m and bonus pools growing by hundreds of millions, over 200 branch closures have been announced so far this year alone.
These bank profits are absurdly high, but they're still benefiting from a tax break: in 2023 the bank surcharge levy was cut to only 3%, which will save banks around £2.5 billion this year. If you put the same windfall tax on excess bank profits as on oil and gas, you could raise over £18.3bn.
As our system struggles, the richest are putting more and more pressure on it to extract as much profit as possible. That comes with major consequences for our jobs, climate, and democracy. |
