COMPANIES with bad pollution records or other poor environmental credentials run the risk of being turned down for bank loans, says Hong Kong Association of Banks chairman Paul Selway-Swift. He was responding to suggestions from the Deputy Secretary for Planning, Environment and Lands, Tony Cooper, that 'if the banker is squeezing the company that will help produce greener products'. Mr Cooper was speaking at the opening of a General Chamber of Commerce seminar on how company policies could help the environment. 'We would like to see people apart from the manufacturers having a bearing on that manufacturer's products,' he said. Examples of such people were, at the downstream end, consumers who might refuse to buy environmentally-unfriendly items or items made by companies they considered environmentally-unfriendly; and at the pre-production stage, the banks supplying the loans with which the company would make its products. Banks in the US had become concerned about lending to firms involved in environmental lawsuits that might reduce their ability to repay the loan, he said.
