prepared to step down as governor of the Bank of England in March 2020. In January 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appointed Carney to the position of finance advisor for the UK presidency of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change conference in Glasgow; at that time the conference was scheduled for November 2020 but it was later postponed to November 2021. As of October 2020, Carney is vice chairman at Brookfield Asset Management where he leads the firm's environmental, social and governance (ESG) and impact fund investment strategy. In February 2021, Carney had to retract an earlier claim that the $600 billion Brookfield Asset Management portfolio was carbon neutral. He based his claim on the fact that Brookfield has a large renewable energy portfolio and "all the avoided emissions that come with that”. The claim was criticized as accounting tricks as avoided emissions do not counteract the emissions from investments in coal and other fossil fuels responsible for Brookfield's carbon footprint of about 5,200 metric tons of carbon dioxide. In February 2021, Carney joined the board of fintech company Stripe. As of March 2021, Stripe was valued at $95 billion. Carney helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) at COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021. He acts as the group's Co-Chair. Policy views Risks of increasing wealth inequality In December 2016, Carney warned of the societal risk of "staggering wealth inequalities" in a Roscoe Lecture at Liverpool John Moores University: "The proportion of the wealth held by the richest 1% of Americans increased from 25% in 1990 to 40% in 2012 ... Globally, the share of wealth held by the richest 1% in the world rose from one-third in 2000 to one-half in 2010." Brexit Carney warned many times that Brexit was expected to negatively influence the UK economy. Consequently, Brexit activists accused him of making statements favouring the UK's continued membership of the European Union (EU) before the British EU-membership referendum. He replied that he felt it was his duty to speak up on such issues. In September 2018, Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the Exchequer, confirmed speculation that Carney would remain as Governor until January 2020, in order to ensure a "smooth" transition after the UK was set to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, a departure deadline that was missed. In November 2018, Carney warned that large parts of the British economy