Norwegians Stub out Tobacco‏

UNISON members are often stereotyped into the anti-arms and anti-fags brigade and that we are only interested in our pension funds getting out of the tobacco and arms industries. Quite right really, who wants to profit from death!

Well the Norwegians have a thing or two to say about that cynicism, their public pension fund have just sold tens of millions of shares in companies who make cigarettes. http://www.responsible-investor.com/home/article/norwegian_tobacco/

The Ministry said the tobacco sell off followed a recommendation banning all tobacco producers from the Government Pension Fund’s Council on Ethics. The fund said the shares had already been sold.

The excluded companies are: Alliance One International Inc., Altria Group Inc., British American Tobacco BHD, British American Tobacco Plc., Gudang Garam tbk pt., Imperial Tobacco Group Plc., ITC Ltd., Japan Tobacco Inc., KT&G Corp, Lorillard Inc., Philip Morris International Inc., Philip Morris Cr AS., Reynolds American Inc., Souza Cruz SA, Swedish Match AB, Universal Corp VA and Vector Group Ltd.

Norwegian Minister of Finance, Sigbjørn Johnsen, said it was important that the ethical guidelines of the fund reflect at all times “what can be considered to be commonly held values of the owners of the fund”. “We have taken these changes on board and believe – amongst others in light of the consultative input in connection with the evaluation of the ethical guidelines – that it is timely to exclude tobacco from the Fund”. The Norwegian fund is the 2nd largest pension fund in the world.

There we go - they believe that investment decisions of a pension fund can be made on the basis of commonly held values of the owners of the fund. Quite right again – if you are in a pension fund you are the beneficiary owner…..