Richard Curtis calls on Wimbledon to end Barclays sponsorship

The manager of Four Weddings and a Funeral is calling connected Wimbledon to extremity its caller sponsorship woody with Barclays implicit the bank's enactment for fossil substance projects.

Richard Curtis and the Make My Money Matter run radical said Barclays was "profiting from clime chaos".

Wimbledon said Barclays was committed to creating entree to athletics for all.

Barclays said it was 1 of the archetypal banks to acceptable an ambition to go nett zero by 2050.

The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) announced Barclays arsenic an authoritative banking spouse of the Championships successful November past year.

As the 2023 Championships get nether mode connected Monday, Curtis is among those to motion an unfastened missive to the AELTC.

The missive is from Make My Money Matter, a run radical co-founded by Curtis that seeks to alteration the fiscal strategy to enactment "people and satellite connected a par with profit".

Addressed to the main enforcement of the AELTC Sally Bolton, it states: "Barclays is Europe's largest fossil substance funder, providing implicit $190 cardinal to the manufacture since the Paris Climate Agreement was struck successful 2016.

"Put simply, Barclays is financing and profiting from clime chaos, and accepting a sponsorship woody from them is an endorsement of these actions," the missive said.

The run radical claims the AELTC's determination to squad up with Barclays is "not lone atrocious for the environment, but besides inconsistent with Wimbledon's taste bequest and biology policies".

"As outlined successful your 2023 clime strategy, your intent is to: 'Sustain… The Championships successful a mode that ensures we have… affirmative interaction connected our environment. We volition beryllium honest, transparent and enactment with integrity successful what we tin and cannot do.'

"We bash not judge sponsorship from Europe's largest funder of fossil fuels is accordant with this approach," the missive states.

In a connection the All England Club said it welcomed Barclays arsenic "the latest summation to our household of authoritative partners".

"Barclays' committedness to creating entree to athletics for each is thing that we are passionate about... our ambition to person a affirmative interaction connected the situation is cardinal to our day-to-day operations and is simply a halfway portion of putting connected a palmy Championships.

"We cognize this is 1 of the defining challenges of our times and we are afloat committed to playing our part. From utilizing 100% renewable energy and offering debased c options connected our menus, to sending zero discarded to landfill and promoting a civilization of reuse, we're moving hard to execute a affirmative biology interaction crossed each of our operations."

Barclays said it believed it could "make the top quality arsenic a slope by moving with customers and clients arsenic they modulation to a low-carbon concern model, focusing connected facilitating the concern needed to alteration concern practices and standard caller greenish technologies".