Slashdot Mirror
Stanford Getting Rid of $18 Billion Endowment of Coal Stock
mdsolar sends this report from the NY Times:
"Stanford University announced Tuesday that it would divest its $18.7 billion endowment of stock in coal-mining companies, becoming the first major university to lend support to a nationwide campaign to purge endowments and pension funds of fossil fuel investments. The university said it acted in accordance with internal guidelines that allow its trustees to consider whether 'corporate policies or practices create substantial social injury' when choosing investments. Coal's status as a major source of carbon pollution linked to climate change persuaded the trustees to remove companies 'whose principal business is coal' from their investment portfolio, the university said."
Harvard divested from tobacco investments over two decades ago and, in retrospect, pretty much everyone agrees it was a good thing. In any event, activists can only push universities to consider their investments. If the university is sitting on a massive endowment and it can easily weather the divestment, then the activists will have their way, but if it were to pose a serious threat to the university, then I think such calls would face great resistance.
I'll wager it is in the interest of the 'shareholders'. As in coal may not be the best 'growth' industry in the coming years.
That said, the only way to be 'whole' with what they are saying is 'reducing' their endowment by 18 billion dollars. I.e. donate the stock and give it away. If they simply sell it, then they still have the benefit of having been given it. One might call it laundered money from a social conscience point of view.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Companies only get money from stock when they offer new shares (or sell those already in company reserves), by refusing to buy shares in these types of companies they are reducing the value of future offerings by becoming one less bidder for those shares.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Stanford University has an $18 billion endowment, but only a fraction of that is invested in coal mining companies. They're not just dumping $18 billion worth of stock.
they are reducing the value of future offerings by becoming one less bidder for those shares.
Not by much, because the summary is WRONG. $18B is the value of their entire endowment. The fraction of that specifically invested in coal is a tiny fraction of that. If they are smart, they already divested, before making the announcement.
Does this mean Standford will divest itself from the use of electricity too? Or is this just a hypocritical publicity stunt?
Stanford receives electricity from two sources -- Cardinal Cogen, an onsite natural gas cogeneration unit, and PG&E. Neither of which use coal.