April 1, 2010
BP Tar Sands Resolution Campaign Hit as UK Pension Funds Back Company Management
Accountability & Transparency Trends
Originally appeared in Responsible Investor, March 30, 2010
A shareholder campaign backed by a group of UK Members of Parliament aimed at forcing BP and Shell to detail investment risks associated with their oil sands developments in Canada and other countries, has run into resistance from other shareholders after the UK’s Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) called on members to vote with management at BP’s annual general meeting in two weeks time. LAPFF, which represents 52 pension schemes with a combined £90bn (€100bn) in assets, said it had issued the alert to members to oppose the shareholder resolution after its own negotiations with BP had provided “sufficient evidence” that the company’s approach to tar sands development was “well-grounded”.
The tar sands resolution at BP’s April 15th AGM now looks like it could pit active institutional investors against each other. The resolution has been filed by a coalition of UK trades unions, NGOs and investors who also launched a campaign to get thousands of pension scheme members to e-mail their own retirement schemes to get them to back the resolutions. The coalition includes UNISON, the UK and Europe’s biggest public sector union with more than 1.3m members and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the fifth largest trade union in the UK with over 300,000 members. Other coalition members, which are being brought together by FairPensions, the lobbying group, include Greenpeace, WWF and Co-operative Asset Management, which is joint filing the resolutions. The campaign has also received backing from some US shareholder groups.
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