American Funds Sheds PetroChina Shares
Article published on February 18, 2010
American Funds has sold off big fund stakes in PetroChina, the target of divestment campaigns due to its business activity in Sudan.
Three funds — EuroPacific Growth, Capital World Growth and Incomeand Capital Income Builder— unloaded 167.9 million Hong Kong-listed shares in the oil company, valued at $189 million, over the past five months, according to a report in Bloomberg.
A human rights advocacy organization, Investors Against Genocide, has been lobbying American to dump the stock and is taking credit for the action.
But American spokesman Chuck Freadhoff tells Bloomberg that the company never adopted a policy ordering managers to buy or sell a specific investment. The company does, however, have a policy urging fund managers and analysts to consider human rights issues when making investment decisions, Freadhoff says.
Investors Against Genocide pushed for a shareholder motion endorsing genocide-free investing at a November American shareholder meeting and got to discuss the issue with American executives, says Eric Cohen, the group's chairman, in a Bloomberg interview. The motion garnered the support of 12% of the voters, he says.
It was clear that the divestment argument was winning the executives over, Cohen tells Bloomberg.
By Joe Morris