‘These obscene profits are a slap in the face to workers whose jobs and futures have not been adequately planned for’
Lloyds nearly doubled third-quarter profits to £2.3bn and Shell’s leapt to £8.12bn in the same week the Chancellor gave banks a lighter tax hit than expected — prompting calls for levies to redirect “obscene” gains into household support
“SICKENING” super-profits by banks and fossil-fuel giants are windfalls from the same crises driving a cost-of-living crisis for ordinary people, MPs and campaigners warned today.
Just a day after Chancellor John Healey’s light-touch Budget appeased banks with a lower than expected corporation tax surcharge, Lloyds Banking Group revealed a near-doubling of profits in the third quarter — to £2.3 billion from £1.2bn in the same period last year.
And oil giant Shell reported a similarly dramatic rise, its third-quarter earnings leaping to £8.12bn from £4.08bn a year ago.
Their surging fortunes reflect a boom time for banks and Big Oil alike. Barclays was the first of the British “big four” banks to post third-quarter profits at the start of the week, giving a figure of £2.3bn — a 12 per cent rise that hasn’t stopped it announcing 5,000 job cuts. HSBC followed with $9.6bn (£7.2bn), a 32 per cent increase. NatWest is due to announce its figure tomorrow.
And the five largest Western oil companies, BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell and TotalEnergies, are expected to report combined third-quarter profits of $53bn (£40bn), more than twice the same figure last year.
“The banks and energy firms are cashing in on the very same soaring prices that are hammering households,” Leeds East MP Richard Burgon told the Morning Star.
“Their super-profits aren’t the result of great investments or innovation. They’re windfalls from the economic turmoil caused by the wars on Ukraine and Iran.
“Windfall taxes should be used to redirect these excess profits into where they’d be really useful — giving cost-of-living support to ordinary people.”
Jeremy Corbyn addresses campaigners from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign taking part in a protest outside Downing Street, London, September 9, 2025
JEREMY CORBYN and Zack Polanski will take part in a March Against Austerity demonstration the day before the Budget next week.
The former Labour leader and Green Party leader will call on the government to put a halt to cuts to council and public services on Tuesday.
The demonstration organised by a coalition of trade unions, campaigns and councillors from across the capital will gather at 6pm on Victoria Embankment before marching to Downing Street.
Mr Polanski said that PM Andy Burnham has said “he wants to bring back hope, but so far he’s all talk… We need to tax the super rich and end austerity.”
Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, NatWest Group and Santander are all set to unveil stronger third quarterly profits in the same week that Chancellor John Healey is expected to target them with a tax hike in his autumn Budget statement on Wednesday.
In an aerial view, the ExxonMobil Baytown Refinery is seen on January 13, 2026, in Baytown, Texas. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Since 2021, top Wall Street banks have committed more than $124 billion in investments to the nine companies set to profit most from the toppling of Venezuela’s government.
As oil industry giants are being set up to profit from President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, a new analysis shows the ample backing those companies have received from Wall Street’s top financial institutions.
Last week, Bloombergreported that stock traders and tycoons were “pouncing” after Trump’s kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month, after having pressured the Trump administration to “create a more favorable business environment in Venezuela.”
A dataset compiled by the international environmental advocacy group Stand.earth shows the extent to which these interests are intertwined.
Stand.earth found that since 2021, banks—including JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, TD, RBC, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—have committed more than $124 billion in investments to the nine companies set to profit most from the toppling of Venezuela’s government.
More than a third of that financing, $42 billion, came in 2025 alone, when Trump launched his aggressive campaign against Venezuela.
Among the companies expected to profit most immediately are refiners like Valero, PBF Energy, Citgo, and Phillips 66, which have large operations on the Gulf Coast that can process the heavy crude Venezuela is known to produce. These four companies have received $41 billion from major banks over the past five years.
Chevron, which also operates many heavy-crude facilities, benefits from being the only US company that operated in Venezuela under the Maduro regime, where it exported more than 140,000 barrels of oil per day last quarter.
At a White House gathering with top oil executives on Friday, the company’s vice chair, Mark Nelson, told Trump the company could double its exports “effective immediately.”
According to Jason Gabelman, an analyst at TD Cowen, the company could increase its annual cash flow by $400 million to $700 million as a result of Trump’s takeover of Venezuelan oil resources.
Chevron was also by far the number-one recipient of investments in 2025, with more than $11 billion in total coming from the banks listed in the report—including $1.78 billion from Barclays, another $1.78 billion from Bank of America, and $1.32 billion from Citigroup.
According to Bloomberg, just weeks before Maduro’s removal, analysts at Citigroup predicted 60% gains on the nation’s more than $60 billion in bonds if he were replaced.
Even ExxonMobil, whose CEO Darren Woods dumped cold water on Trump’s calls to set up operations in Venezuela on Friday, calling the nation “uninvestable,” potentially has something major to gain from Maduro’s overthrow.
Exxon and ConocoPhillips each have outstanding arbitration cases against Venezuela over the government’s 2007 nationalization of oil assets, which could award them $20 billion and $12 billion, respectively.
The report found that in 2025, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips received a combined total of more than $12.8 billion in investment from major financial institutions, which vastly exceeded that from previous years.
Data on these staggering investments comes as oil companies face increased scrutiny surrounding possible foreknowledge of Trump’s attack on Venezuela.
Last week, US Senate Democrats launched a formal investigation into “communications between major US oil and oilfield services companies and the Trump administration surrounding last week’s military action in Venezuela and efforts to exploit Venezuelan oil resources.”
Richard Brooks, Stand.earth’s climate finance director, said the role of the financial institutions underwriting those oil companies should not be overlooked either.
“Without financial support from big banks and investors, the likes of Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Valero would not have the power that they do to start wars, overthrow governments, or slow the pace of climate action,” he said. “Banks and investors need to choose if they are on the side of peace, or of warmongering oil companies.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Original article by Rob Soutar republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Oil companies’ move to double down on fossil fuels should come as no surprise to anyone – not least its financers
Last week, BP’s CEO Murray Auchincloss said his company had gone “too far, too fast” in its plan to transition away from fossil fuels. BP still says it aims to be a net zero company by 2050 but it will now take a different path to the one it set out in 2021 … doubling down on fossil fuels in the meantime.
Perhaps the move shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, BP is a commercial enterprise with a responsibility to deliver returns for its shareholders. And since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led many countries to prioritise energy security over long-term sustainability, oil and gas have remained reliably lucrative.
What’s more, the company made a similar announcement two years ago, saying it would be ramping up its investments in oil and gas.
But if BP had indicated such a significant change in direction so long ago, how did it continue to raise billions from banks that said they’d only do business with “net zero” companies?
Milestone moment?
At the 2021 climate talks in Glasgow, a number of the world’s leading banks made landmark pledges: to slash the footprint of their own operations and, crucially, the emissions of their lending and investment portfolios.
It was hailed as a watershed moment. In theory, the vast stockpiles of money that had supported fossil fuel expansion would now be cut off for companies without net zero ambitions. The same year, the International Energy Agency warned that there must be no new oil and gas projects if the world is to reach net zero by 2050.
The deals illustrate a core problem with the banks’ net zero commitments. A key condition for companies they agreed to do business with was the existence of a “credible” transition plan. But it wasn’t always clear how the banks were assessing that credibility.
Even before Auchincloss’ announcement last week, the world-leading Grantham Research Institute assessed the credibility of oil and gas companies’ transition plans – and found that BP’s fell well short.
That lack of clarity on what was “credible” left the banks with enough wriggle room to maintain relationships with huge fossil fuel companies.
And those relationships have proved profitable. Since May 2021, global banks that have committed to net zero have poured almost $1 trillion into companies pursuing expansion of oil and gas projects that would push the world beyond its survivable limits.
Looking long-term
The policy environment has changed since Glasgow, when both fossil fuel companies and banks launched net zero targets. BP is not the only company of its kind to have “reset” its core business to oil and gas. But critics say that recent moves to boost fossil fuels and ensure quick returns are alarmingly short-sighted.
In the UK, the costs of getting to net zero are cheaper than was anticipated just five years ago, according to a recent report by the Climate Change Committee. And in a low-carbon economy, fossil fuels could nosedive – leaving the oil and gas fields currently in development as “stranded assets” with little value.
But crucially, the banks face considerable risks too. Their previous promises to work only with clients committed to the transition were made for a reason: they were feeling the pressure from climate-conscious investors.
If the banks are found to have broken these promises, they could well be held to account by regulators – not to mention see their credibility shattered in the eyes of their investors.
Reporter: Rob Soutar Deputy editor: Chrissie Giles Editor: Franz Wild Fact checker: Ero Parksakoulaki Production editor: Alex Hess
TBIJ has a number of funders, a full list of which can be found here. None of our funders have any influence over editorial decisions or output.
Original article by Rob Soutar republished from TBIJ under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Corrected a reference to “oil company’s” in the subheading in this version.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
RACHEL REEVES’S decision to protect fat cat bankers has lost the public £15 billion — money that could have saved freezing pensioners and hundreds of thousands of children from going hungry, a damning new report found today.
Campaigners for a windfall tax on banking profits slammed the Chancellor after it emerged that Britain’s four biggest banks made a record £45.9bn in profits for 2024.
Positive Money found that the policy, called for by unions and left MPs, would have brought in an additional £14.7bn for the Exchequer this year after Lloyds Bank became the last of the so-called Big Four to announce its £6bn pre-tax profits for last year.
The group calculated that increasing the existing surcharge on bank profits from 3 to 35 per cent, in line with the government’s windfall tax on energy companies, could have raised this sum from Lloyds, HSBC, Barclays and NatWest alone.
This would be enough to cover the cost of scrapping the two-child benefit cap — fives times over.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer says pensioners can freeze to death and poor children can starve and be condemned to failure and misery all their lives.
‘These obscene profits are a slap in the face to workers whose jobs and futures have not been adequately planned for’
