NZ Super Fund ok with nuclear investment

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has rebuffed the Green Party’s statement alleging the Fund was investing in tobacco and nuclear weapons.

An answer to a parliamentary written question has shown the New Zealand Superannuation Fund still holds 80,000 shares in Shanghai Industrial Holdings Ltd — a company involved in the manufacture of tobacco. The Fund promised to divest from tobacco-related industries in 2007.

Fund spokesman Paul Gregory says the issue the Green Party pointed out was something the New Zealand Superannuation Fund had become aware of, and were acting to change.

“We are in the process of revising or refining the way that we screen, relative to our exclusion. We already had a list [of possible companies to be excluded], they brought to our attention a company which is on our list."

He says the Fund's past alterations to investment strategies show it is "pretty much impossible" to get the process 100% right from the start. "The important thing is to keep taking it seriously and ensuring your systems and processes are as good as they can be.”

He says the next list of excluded companies will be made public by August 30. 

“Once we’ve finalised it – because this method is pretty thorough, so we just have to go through and make sure that we wouldn’t be making a decision to exclude something which was unmerited. We have to do quite a thorough job on that.”

The Green Party also criticised the Fund for its $2.1 million investment in Larsen & Toubro, which it described as “India’s largest defence engineering company, involved in the manufacture of a fleet of nuclear-armed submarines”.

Mr Gregory says the Fund excludes companies involved in the manufacture of nuclear explosive devices, or the testing of nuclear explosive devices.

Larsen & Toubro does not meet their criteria for exclusion.

“Anything else we have not excluded, and that includes what gets classified as ‘delivery systems’. That’s because there are a whole lot of other things we have to take into consideration with all our exclusions. “

If the Fund was to exclude companies associated with nuclear delivery systems, they would have to exclude Boeing.

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund is a founder member of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI). Mr Gregory said the UNPRI rated the Fund one of the top institutional investors in the world for its approach to Responsible Investment.

 “The ongoing attention that we pay to these issues – because we do take them pretty seriously, unlike the Greens would suggest – means that we just keep on trying to do it better. We can never guarantee that we’re always going to pick up everything, but what we can guarantee is that we’ll make ongoing serious efforts to do the best job that we can.”