Fidelity

Many financial institutions invest in a handful of foreign oil companies which help to fund the government of Sudan’s deadly campaign of violence against millions of its citizens.  With over a quarter billion dollar stake in both PetroChina and Sinopec, Fidelity is a large investor in two of those oil companies.

Since 2006, Fidelity has actively opposed changing its policies to avoid investments tied to genocide. In 2008 and 2009, despite of Fidelity’s active opposition, shareholders of 20 Fidelity funds voted their values and demonstrated unusually strong levels of support for the genocide-free shareholder proposals with recorded votes ranging from 17% to 31% in favor of genocide-free investing.

Shareholders at six Fidelity funds voted on our shareholder proposal on genocide-free investing on June 18, 2013. Read more about the vote here.

In February 2007, Fidelity’s stake in PetroChina reached $1.3 billion.  However, in the first half of 2007, one of Fidelity’s fund managers, William Danoff, sold all of his portfolio holdings in companies with ties to genocide, amounting to about half of the total that Fidelity held at that time and nearly all of what Fidelity held on the New York stock exchange. Since then, Fidelity has continued to be a large shareholder in PetroChina and Sinopec with most shares purchased on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Since Fidelity has made no commitment regarding divestment from PetroChina and Sinopec, investors entrusting their money to Fidelity mutual funds continue to risk inadvertently investing in these companies helping to fund the genocide in Sudan.