Institutional investors have largely resisted banding together on issues. Many college endowments sold shares of U.S. companies that operated in South Africa to protest the apartheid movement in the 1970s and 1980s.
Ailman said the Calstrs board has made firearms the top priority on its list of environmental, social and governance issues.
Calstrs has engaged in various efforts for more than 25 years, and Ailman said he doesn’t expect overnight changes. “It’s darn hard and it’s slow.”
(Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, is a donor to groups that support gun control, including Everytown for Gun Safety.)
The list of investors seeking firearms reform and approximate assets as of Sept. 30:
State Street Global Advisors, $2.81 trillion; Nuveen, asset manager of TIAA, $988 billion; California public employees, $362 billion; California teachers , $229.2 billion; Florida pension fund, $202.6 billion; Oregon pension fund, $78 billion; Maryland pension fund, $52.3 billion; Connecticut pension fund, $35 billion; San Francisco pension fund, $25.3, billion; Wespath Inv Mgmt., $23 billion; Maine pension fund, $14.6 billion; Rockefeller Asset Mgmt. $10.1 billion; Oblate Int’l Pastoral Inv. Trust, $0.55 billion.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.