Responsible Investor

RI global news round up

The RI news you may have missed this week.

The US Supreme Court will this week begin its hearing into StoneRidge vs Scientific Atlanta, an important test case for institutional investors. StoneRidge Investment Partners, the US equity and fixed income fund manager, alleges that between 2000 and 2001, Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, now part of Cisco Systems, participated in a “scheme to defraud” investors through a series of improper advertising transactions with cable TV company Charter Communications that inflated the latter’s revenues. Motorola and Scientific Atlanta allegedly used the extra revenues as credit for advertisement. StoneRidge is petitioning the court for the right to sue for investment losses that occurred at Charter Communications when the inflated revenues were revealed. Charter’s market value plunged by $7bn (€5bn).
Jacob Zamansky, a principal in the firm Zamansky & Associates, said the eventual decision would have a significant impact on whether investors in companies that commit securities fraud should be able to sue investment banks, accountants, lawyers and others who were direct “participants” in a deception. He said current shareholders’ rights for going after third parties that aid or abet corporate fraud were not clearly defined in US law.

Alain Grisay, chief executive of F&C Asset Management, has told the US Congressional Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in Washington DC that business and investors

can only play their part in tackling climate change if government takes leading action. Grisay was invited to testify because of F&C’s involvement in the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change. Grisay said: “The costs of moving forward today, in a planned and deliberate way, are modest and will even yield profitable business opportunities for many innovative companies along the way. These costs are dwarfed by the costs of inaction, when one considers the human, natural and economic consequences of a business-as-usual approach. In short, we simply cannot put our head in the sand.” Grisay said business could play a vital role in marshalling the capital to finance the innovative technologies required to tackle climate change but that it needed government to set clear long-term environmental standards. Grisay said F&C supports binding global targets on reductions in carbon emissions and the development of national and international policy frameworks for the next 30 years or more, as well as the emergence of a US cap-and-trade system consistent with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
Fortis Investments has signed the UN Principles for Responsible Investment. The principles commit fund managers and institutional investors to incorporate responsible investment practice into investment analysis and decision-making processes.
Colin Melvin, former chairman of the UN PRI and chief executive officer of Hermes Equity Ownership Services, has reportedly said the initiative needs a “moment of

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