NEW YORK — Discussions of the bloodshed in Darfur or issues like climate change make regular appearances in the world of politics, but lately investors might notice that these issues have wedged their way into often-dry financial disclosures.
The proxy voting forms that shareholders of mutual funds or individual stocks receive are often tossed aside as just plain boring. But investors might be surprised by the shadow that politics casts on some ballot items.
Shareholders of Fidelity Investments’ huge Contrafund, which has about $73 billion in assets, are now casting votes ahead of the fund’s Wednesday meeting on whether Fidelity should weed out holdings in companies that “substantially contribute to genocide, patterns of extraordinary and egregious violations of human rights or crimes against humanity.”
A perusal of most proxy ballots would find nary a mention of words like genocide.
Contrafund is one of several Fidelity funds whose shareholders are voting on proposals aimed at preventing investment in companies like PetroChina Co. Fidelity last year sold the bulk of its holdings in the Chinese oil company but advocates are urging Fidelity to outright ban ownership of the shares.
Critics have said PetroChina has sizable ties to the government-owned oil industry in Sudan, the African nation that the U.S. government has said is complicit in genocide there.
Conflicts in far-off places aren’t the only somewhat unusual items popping up on proxy ballots. The Investor Network on Climate Risk, an alliance of 60 institutional investors whose assets reach more than $5 trillion, said this month that investors have filed 54 shareholder resolutions on global warming with U.S. companies, nearly double the number of such filings two years ago.
The petitions filed with companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. and U.S. Airways Group Inc. seek greater disclosure on how these businesses might respond, for example, to regulation of greenhouse gases or increased demand for more energy-efficient services. Some petitions are asking companies to set emissions-reduction targets.
“We view these things as long-term risks,” Jack Ehnes, chief executive at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, said of the difficulties companies such as those in the energy sector could face from a warming planet.
CalSTRS, with assets of about $167 billion, is the nation’s second-largest public pension fund behind the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and filed resolutions on climate change for the first time this year.
Even those who are agnostic on the science of climate change could see a business risk from failing to plan for climate change, he said.
“If it is a cause, it’s a cause of protecting our portfolio and maximizing our returns,” Ehnes said. “I think the fiduciary connection here is pretty solid.”
Some individual investors might share the concerns of big institutional players on these types of issues but risk missing their chance to weigh in.
Eric Cohen, chairman of the organization Investors Against Genocide, said getting shareholders to open proxy voting materials is the biggest challenge. Investors realize that such ballots often seek votes on more parochial concerns that can elicit a good deal less passion, such as the makeup of a board.
“Individual investors now get to express their voice by virtue of the shares they own,” he said. “We know that there’s a whole lot of ignoring of these things. If it wasn’t ignored, I think we’d win on the first try.”
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