Responsible Investor

RI Global news round-up 18/12/07

RI’s bite-size round up of the week’s important responsible investment stories.

The German state of Hessen is to invest up to 20% of €428m in civil servant pension money in stocks that make up the Dow Jones Euro Stoxx Sustainability Index in its first move towards ecological and social investment, reports German magazine Portfolio Institutionell. German investors are gradually increasing their allocations to SRI investment despite a recent report by Axel Hesse, consultant for Germany-based S-DM, Sustainable Development Management, in conjunction with Swisscanto, the Swiss fund manager, which found they had some way to “catch up” on knowledge levels about responsible investment shown in other European countries. 
The report said it did not detect any major change from a 2005 report, which found that only one out of 20 German pension funds said they had a “very good” understanding of sustainable investments and six were “rather poorly” informed. Notable exceptions include the €260m Gothaer Pension fund, the €134m Gerling pension fund, the €49m Hannoversich pension fund, the Hamburg Mannheimer pension fund, Victoria Pension fund and Metallrente, the €1bn pension fund for the German metal industry, which also bases its investments on Dow Jones sustainability indices.
Harrington Investments, the US socially responsible investment advisory firm, is targeting Monsanto, the US agricultural company with a shareholder resolution that could make company directors directly responsible in the event of activities that cause “harm to the natural environment, public health, or human rights.“


Harrington will present the binding amendment to change Monsanto’s corporate bylaws for vote at the company’s annual general meeting on January 16.
John Harrington, President and CEO of Harrington Investments, said: “We chose Monsanto as our target for this new approach, because we view this company as facing significant legal and reputational liabilities that might have been prevented with better board oversight. These include allegations of selling potentially dangerous products abroad, bribing foreign government officials, and releasing genetically engineered products that have not been proven safe for human consumption or the natural environment. Such activities are bad for our company’s reputation, and could lead to substantial liabilities. The idea behind this resolution is that by increasing the personal accountability of corporate directors, our proposed bylaw amendment would encourage these fiduciaries to better represent the shareholders of the corporation – and to serve as better guardians of the public interest.” Harrington is urging other shareholders to support its resolution.
The €9.3bn ($13.1bn) AP7 Swedish pensions buffer fund is to use the FTSE ET50 index as the benchmark for a new commitment of $500m to the clean technology sector, for which the fund will select fund managers during 2008.Christian Ragnartz, chief analyst at AP7 said: “We chose the FTSE ET50 Index as a benchmark because of its broad range of pure-play and global clean technology companies and because the FTSE ET50

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