Responsible Investor

Ricardo Nogueira, who moves to the US from London. Nogeuira will advise on the investments of Trading Emissions, EEA’s carbon subsidiary, and Leaf Clean Energy Company, its AIM-listed renewable energy investment company. The EEA Group was set up in 2003 and has approximately £850m in assets under management.
US President George Bush has signed legislation that allows pension and mutual funds to divest from companies doing business in Sudan without having to worry about subsequent legal action. US public pension funds have already pulled assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from companies operating in Sudan as a result of state-led political decisions.
The US House of Representatives unanimously passed the “Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act” and is expected to require publication of a list of sanctioned companies, which could lead other US states to push their public pension funds to divest from the named companies.
The US State of New Jersey has passed legislation prohibiting the state’s pension funds from investing in foreign companies doing business in Iran. States with similar legislation pending include Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Californian pension fund giants, Calpers and Calstrs have said they will have to sell combined assets of $3.4bn (€2.4bn) if companies they hold stock in don’t halt their operations in Iran, after the state approved similar legislation.
US class action lawsuits over securities fraud against financial services companies more than

quadrupled to 47 during 2007 against 11 in 2006 with almost half of the cases involving sub-prime mortgages, according to a report by the Stanford University Law School Securities Class Action Clearinghouse and Cornerstone Research. Total securities fraud class actions jumped by 43% in 2007 compared to 2006, with a total of 166 companies being sued.
However, the Stanford University report said the number of class actions in 2007 was 14% below its 10-year historical average of 194 companies sued per year.
UK trades unions have called off planned strikes at UK airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick, after BAA, the airport owners reversed a decision to close the final salary pension scheme to new entrants. BAA has also agreed not to make any changes to the pension scheme in future without consultation,
Almost a quarter of Norway’s companies have reportedly failed to comply with a controversial law requiring them to increase the proportion of women on their boards to 40%, according to Norwegian government figures released in December, reports UK newspaper the Guardian. Norway’s 487 public limited companies, including 175 firms listed on the Oslo stock
exchange, had until the end of 2007 to implement a 2003 act requiring companies to boost the number of female directors or face the threat of closure. The law, which introduced quotas, has been effective in raising the number of women board members at listed companies from 6% in 2001 to 37%. Norway now boasts the highest proportion of women on boards in the world. Sweden comes second with 19%; the US has around 15% and the UK 11%.

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