Climate-related issues have always dominated sustainable finance, so it may raise a few eyebrows that Euromoney has named as North America’s best bank for sustainable finance a firm that saw its fossil-fuel investments jump by 87% in 2021. Indeed, until very recently, this year’s winner still boasted a long-running membership of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which it has now let lapse.

Celebrating its 190th anniversary this year, making it older than the confederation of Canada itself, Scotiabank has quite a heritage. So does Brian Porter, its chief executive, who has been at the firm for his whole career, stretching back to 1981. But when he took the helm in 2013, his job was to reposition a bank that might best have been described as a mini-HSBC.