ABSTRACT
The most prominent pension funds involved in SRI are located in the USA, the UK and Switzerland. One can identify a certain pattern as most of them are public funds, often representing academics. The potential of their investment capabilities can be enormous, as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS)5 example shows:
CalPERS is respected for its pioneering role in corporate governance. The company made its first commitment to corporate governance in 1984, and since then has actively engaged companies. At the end of the 1980s, CalPERS published corresponding investment targets and strategies, also referring to its fiduciary obligations. In 1994, CalPERS announced that it would begin factoring labour management relations and other aspects of human resource management and workplace practices into its analysis of company performance in connection with the fund’s investment and voting decisions (Brancanto 1997: 67). Recently, CalPERS provoked discussions within the SRI community as it announced that it would blacklist four South-East Asian markets (Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia) on ethical grounds. Tessa Tennant, the representative of the Asian SRI Forum, criticises the ban as she prefers engagement and the backing of proactive companies within these countries (DresdnerKleinwortWasserstein 2003).
