Sumitomo Mitsui Financial : Announcement for Strategic Capital and Business Alliance

【NEWS RELEASE】

June 14, 2024

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation

Asuene Inc.

Announcement for Strategic Capital and Business Alliance

TOKYO, June 14, 2024 --- Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation ("SMBC", President and CEO: Akihiro Fukutome) announced today that has entered a strategic alliance with Asuene Inc. ("Asuene", Co-Founder & CEO: Kohei Nishiwada) to advance decarbonization and ESG management in Japan and globally.

Since October 2023, SMBC has been providing "ASUENE ESG", the ESG evaluation cloud solution developed by Asuene (*1). Leveraging this collaboration, SMBC and Asuene have now agreed to expand the scope of strategic partnership and further accelerate these initiatives.

To achieve net-zero in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, the first step for every company is to understand its current situation and to visualize its volume of GHG emission in particular. With this strategic capital and business alliance between Asuene and SMBC, which are both leading providers of GHG visualization cloud services (*2) in Japan, we will provide corporate customers with our services that take advantage of each other's capability. Such services include effective decarbonization management solutions based on factual data, business matching in leverage with SMBC's global customer base and various types of financing.

We are receiving an increasing number of inquiries from many companies regarding how to utilize the visualized GHG-related data and how to identify specific measures to reduce emissions. Through this alliance, we will be able to better understand the concerns of these companies and accompany them on the journey toward decarbonization and sustainability management.

In addition, Asuene and SMBC will focus on expanding more effective support globally based on our capabilities accumulated in Japan, which we believe is inevitable to pass on to the next generation a better environment where people can live with peace of mind. Towards this goal, we will expand our client base to be recognized as the No.1 in the Asian region, where we both have a strong presence, and aim to become the top decarbonization management partner in the global market.

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Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (President and CEO: Toru Nakashima) has announced that "Create Social Value" is one of our three core policies to contribute to "Fulfilled Growth" in our Medium-Term Management Plan titled "Plan for Fulfilled Growth". This new alliance with Asuene will strengthen our commitment to contributing to a sustainable and decarbonized society by meeting the sustainability-related needs of our corporate customers as well as our initiatives designed to address environmental challenges.

Reference: Overview of ASUENE

Company Name	Asuene Inc.
Date of establishment	October, 2019
Representative	Co-Founder＆CEO Kohei Nishiwada
Company Profile	Asuene Inc. is a leading Climate Tech company in Japan with the mission
	of "Changing the world for a better next generation." To Provide
	"ASUENE", a carbon accounting platform to measure, report and reduce
	carbon emissions of companies and contribute to the net zero society.
URL	https://corp.earthene.com/en

*1 Release of an agreement for the provision of ESG Cloud Rating Scoring Platform https://www.smbc.co.jp/news/pdf/j20231010_01.pdf

*2 ASUENE has been introduced by more than 6,000 companies, and SMBC has been provided by more than 1,800 companies that have adopted Sustana.

(Reference: About Sustana) https://www.smbc.co.jp/hojin/businessassist/sustana/

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