This week, Divestment Facts responded to the New York City Comptroller’s Request for Information (RFI), from which his office hopes to gather insight into how the city can divest $5 billion in fossil fuel assets during a five-year period in a manner “consistent with fiduciary duty.” Our response, which highlights the findings of numerous professors …
Today, Pope Francis’ will hold a meeting with investment and energy executives to discuss climate change and engagement opportunities. While this meeting is largely focused on engagement, it is not surprising that some pro-divestment activists have used the meeting as an opportunity to tout their campaign and call for broader action. Let’s take a look …
Last week The Wall Street Journal ran an expertly-written opinion piece laying out the many reasons why fossil fuel divestment is a waste of time. It’s author, Paul H. Tice, is an investment management professional and an adjunct professor of finance at New York University (NYU), a school that rejected fossil fuel divestment in 2016, …
This week, just two short years after the University of Massachusetts (UMass) held itself up as “the first major public university to divest its endowment of fossil fuels,” its own Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) released a report concluding that divestment is all but useless. Written by a Robert Pollen, a distinguished professor of economics …
This week, Rolling Stone published Bill McKibben’s latest attempt to publicize his troubled fossil fuel divestment campaign. However, anyone with even an inkling of what the divestment movement entails –and its serious limitations– probably couldn’t even make it half-way through. From failing to understand the legal obligations of city and state comptrollers, grossly inflating the …
The Heartland Institute and Bloomberg recently reported that the managers of Harvard’s endowment lost a whopping $1 billion by prioritizing “feel good” investments over ones that consistently generate solid returns. These losses, along with the stunning $8.5 billion losses that CalPERS faced after pursuing a divestment strategy, fly in the face of activist claims that …
Despite public pledges from environmental groups and universities to combat climate change and divest from fossil fuels, many of these institutions are secretly investing in and benefitting from overseas funds that support oil and gas projects. That’s the conclusion of a recent, in-depth investigation by NBC News into the “Paradise Papers,” documents leaked in late …
The U.S. Department of Labor and Chief Investment Officers (CIOs) of some of the largest U.S. pensions funds are warning against making divestment decisions based strictly on social issues, emphasizing that it can violate fiduciary responsibility while having little to no corporate impact. The Labor Department, which oversees retirement plan funds, recently released new guidelines …
In another defeat for the ailing divestment movement, Grinnell College’s student newspaper reports the school’s Divestment Task Force is recommending the Board of Trustees reject costly fossil fuel divestment, saying the move will lead to “a very substantial level of investment and return risk that could have serious long-term consequences that adversely affect the mission …
This week administrators at NYU and Middlebury College stood their ground against student activists demanding fossil fuel divestment. In both instances their reasons were simple and straightforward; fossil fuel divestment will decrease investment returns and damage the endowment, a realization the Chief Investment Officer for the New York City Retirement System came to this week …
All quotes featured by professors and school leaders on this website are public statements made by individuals and are not necessarily representative of the institution of which they are associated. Said schools and universities are also not affiliated with IPAA or DivestmentFacts.com.