Deutsche Bank-owned asset manager DWS fined $27 million for greenwashing

FRANKFURT (Reuters) -German prosecutors have fined asset manager DWS 25 million euros ($27 million) after a lengthy probe found the firm guilty of greenwashing, or making misleading statements about its environmental and social investing credentials.

Deutsche Bank-owned DWS had publicly claimed that it was a "leader" in environmental, social and governance investing, and that ESG was an integral part of its DNA.

But these statements "did not correspond to reality" and DWS misled investors from around mid-2020 to the end of January 2023, the Frankfurt state prosecutor's office said in a statement on Wednesday, following an investigation that has dogged the asset manager since 2021.

The prosecutors said the fine was for breaches of German financial investment laws, while DWS said in a statement the prosecutor's office had identified a "negligent infringement".

The fine comes after DWS agreed in 2023 to pay $25 million in the United States to settle charges over misstatements linked to ESG investing, and for failures in policies designed to prevent money laundering.

DWS said on Wednesday that it accepted the latest fine, and that it would not affect its first-quarter results as it had already made provisions.

"In recent years, we have already publicly acknowledged that ... our marketing was sometimes exuberant. We have already improved our internal documentation and control processes, and we continue to do so," DWS said.

Its shares were down 2% at 1307 GMT, underperforming a 1.4% decline in the European banking index.

In 2021, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic began investigating accusations, sparked by a whistleblower, that DWS may have misled investors by marketing its funds as greener than they actually were.

Desiree Fixler, who joined DWS as group sustainability officer in 2020, would later allege to regulators, investigators and journalists that DWS misrepresented how green its investments were. She left the company in 2021.

Its CEO at the time, Asoka Woehrmann, who has called the allegations relating to his time in office "unfounded", later resigned after German prosecutors raided DWS and Deutsche Bank offices in Frankfurt.

Regulators globally have sought to clamp down on greenwashing by companies in order to improve transparency about the sustainability of investments.

DWS, which is 80% owned by Deutsche Bank, manages around 1 trillion euros in assets.

($1 = 0.9261 euros)

(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Matthias Inverardi and Tommy Reggiori Wilkes, Editing by Rachna Uppal, Louise Heavens and Mark Potter)