Swedish Pensions Divest From Handful of Companies Over Environmental, Ethics Concerns

Four Swedish pension funds are exiting three companies – Motorola Solutions, Agrium and Barrick Gold – over environmental and ethics concerns, according to a report from ai-cio.com.

More from Chief Investment Officer magazine:

The Ethics Council, formed by four of Sweden’s national pension funds, has excluded three companies from investment portfolios after deciding further dialogue over their concerns would be fruitless.

[…]

The group took separate issues with these three companies.

“The Ethical Council has recommended exclusion of Barrick Gold due to serious negative environmental impact by depositing tailings in river system,” the report said. “The recommendation to exclude Motorola Solutions is based on their involvement in customized monitoring systems for settlements in the occupied parts of the West Bank and finally the company Agrium that intends to continue to buy and use phosphates from the occupied Western Sahara.”

During 2014, the council held 308 dialogues with international companies, which resulted in just these three being excluded.

The pension funds collectively manage $100 billion in assets.

Photo credit: By User: Odengatan, User: Kjoonlee – own work, based on work by User: Odengatan. Licensed under Public Domain via <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/”>Wikimedia Commons</a>.