Fidelity Investments: Against Genocide to the Minimum Extent Required by Law

[l33tminion]

The current shareholder meeting for Fidelity includes a proposal for the board to implement procedures to avoid investing in companies complicit in genocide. The proposal is pretty straightforward and very minimal:

RESOLVED:
Shareholders request that the Board institute procedures to prevent holding investments in companies that, in the judgment of the Board, substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity, the most egregious violations of human rights.

But the Board (which gives their recommendation for every proposal) is against it:

[... repetitive bit about how they comply with the letter of the law ...] The Fidelity Funds Board of Trustees recognizes and respects that investors, including those investing in this Fund, have other investment opportunities open to them should they wish to avoid investments in certain companies or countries. Shareholders of the Fund, however, have chosen to invest in this Fund based on its specific stated investment policies. If adopted, this proposal would limit investments by the Fund that would be lawful under the laws of the United States. For this reason, the Board of Trustees recommends that you vote AGAINST this proposal.

In other words, if you want the fund to have even the most minimal ethics restrictions on its investments, go elsewhere. Some people like profiting from genocide, and it would be wrong to ruin things for them.

Needless to say, this gives me a very low opinion of the Fidelity trustees.

Comments

[krint01.livejournal.com]

This is the sort of thing that, if put on enough blogs, could eventually hit the news and embarrass the hell out of Fidelity.

Worth a shot?

[l33tminion]

Indeed.

[maniacx.livejournal.com]

We don't know each other, but I received the same proposal from Fidelity and wrote a similar blog post regarding this. A friend of mine happened to find your blog entry as well.

I've started contacting my local print and TV media and notified Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch, and Save Darfur regarding this. I have lower expectations for results from print/TV media, but it's my hope as well that this will gain traction from blogs, Facebook, and similar media. I've contacted several of my more investment-minded friends to let them know about this just in case they hadn't heard.

Thanks for speaking out about this.

[l33tminion]

Any luck with any of those venues? I tried a few leads, but haven't heard much back.

[maniacx.livejournal.com]

I have no news on this front, unfortunately. A friend and I started calling local media around five on Friday, which is when they start their evening news cycle. I spoke with the local CBS affiliate and one of Dallas's papers, but since I did so over the weekend I doubt anyone's even read my e-mails yet.

I'm calling Amnesty tomorrow because I'm not entirely sure they have an appropriate e-mail address on their website to handle this.

[l33tminion]

Possibly useful links:

The WSJ has a story on the proposal.

The effort behind the proposal is evidently spearheaded by Investors Against Genocide, I'm going to look into donating.

Evidently, the board of Fidelity tried to block the proposal entirely, but the SEC required them to do a shareholder vote.

[maniacx.livejournal.com]

I found that same Investors Against Genocide page through a friend, actually.

I'm speaking with my employer's HR department too, and planning to refer an HR representative to that website. I've considered printing off a batch of flyers and asking some local businesses if I could hang them, but I'm not sure how much good it would do to have less targeted "advertising", for lack of a better word.