A coalition of environmental groups is asking the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to halt the initial public offering (IPO) of JBS S.A. on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) over concerns about the meatpacker’s governance and climate concerns.
JBS applied on July 12 to list the company’s shares on both the São Paulo Stock Exchange and the NYSE.
Mighty Earth and Rainforest Action Network (RAN) have filed separate complaints alleging the contesting statements made by JBS on their IPO application are inaccurate regarding the company’s impact on deforestation, conflicts with the Indigenous population in the Amazon, greenwashing and previous allegations of bribery and corruption.
“This is probably the single most important IPO for the climate in history,” Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth, said. “There are profound implications for the planet if JBS, the world’s worst Amazon deforester, is given the go ahead to seek billions of dollars from Wall Street to continue tearing down rainforest, polluting on a vast scale and driving land-grabbing.”
Some concerns brought by both groups include:
• Misleading statements regarding JBS’ negative climate impacts, with no mention of methane emissions, which compare to an estimated 55% of U.S. livestock methane emissions.
• JBS will restructure the business to a new entity in the Netherlands, JBS NV, creating a risk for minority shareholders and increasing voting power to the JBS founders, the Batista family, between 85% and 90.5%.
• In 2021, JBS made a net-zero pledge for greenhouse gas emissions and sold $3.2 billion worth of green bonds to achieve the goal by 2040. However, RAN points to a study by independent researchers stating they did not find “evidence of any planned deep decarbonization measures.”
• RAN contends the company has been embroiled in bribery and corruption scandals since 2017, both in the U.S. and Brazil. The company paid settlements in 2020, 2021 and 2022 in the U.S. for accusations of foreign corrupt practices, bribery and price-fixing.
“To fulfill its role of basic due diligence, we request that the SEC conduct a thorough investigation into the pattern of alarming and unacceptable corporate conduct by JBS before granting it an IPO on the NYSE,” said Merel van der Mark, spokesperson for RAN.
According to Meat+Poultry, JBS has been working on an IPO for nearly a decade, but the listing was delayed due to corruption charges in 2017 and then again due to COVID-19. — Charles Wallace, WLJ contributing editor
