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No longer signed up to Equator Principles

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EP helps identify, manage environmental, social risk

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"A very troubling move" - Stand.Earth's Brooks

(Adds NGO quote, background on Equator Principles, bullet

points)

By Simon Jessop, Ross Kerber and Isla Binnie

LONDON/BOSTON, March 5 (Reuters) - Four of the biggest

U.S. banks including JPMorgan ( JPM ) are no longer signatories

to the Equator Principles, an industry benchmark for assessing

environmental and social risks in project-related finance, its

website showed.

Set up and led by the banking industry, the principles help

firms identify, assess and manage the potentially adverse

impacts created by large infrastructure and industrial projects,

and have been around since 2003.

The U.S. banks, which also include Citi, Bank of

America ( BAC ) and Wells Fargo ( WFC ), all left the voluntary

initiative this year, the Equator Principles website showed,

without giving further details.

A spokesperson for the Equator Principles said the website

was updated with the new information on Monday but declined to

comment further, referring questions to the banks concerned, all

of which did not immediately comment.

The move is the latest by some of the country's biggest

financial services companies to leave group efforts connected to

managing environmental or social risks, amid pressure from some

Republican politicians that they could breach antitrust rules.

For Richard Brooks, climate finance director at nonprofit

Stand.Earth, it was a "very troubling move by some of the

biggest banks in the world to abandon a bare minimum set of

standards which banks themselves have set".