Vanguard adopts social screening

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Vanguard adopts social screening

Vanguard Group has formalized a process to monitor its mutual funds for investments in companies that may be linked to human-rights abuses.

The policy's disclosure, made in a regulatory filing Tuesday, comes as an activist group presses the manager of about $1 trillion in U.S. mutual fund assets to drop investments the group says are linked to genocide.

In a proxy filing for its annual meeting July 2, privately held Vanguard urged shareholders in its funds to reject a proposal backed by Investors Against Genocide. Vanguard argues the proposal would duplicate the fund-screening process it has adopted.

But so far, Investors Against Genocide says there's no indication Vanguard has sold investments in Chinese oil companies and other firms that the group says are linked to genocide in the African nation of Sudan.

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