Christian investors bring campaign to Europe
One of the US' most activist investors, which votes against company boards 70% of the time and has wrung concessions from several firms in the country, has hired four European asset managers to help run its funds as it sets up a business in the region.
Christian Brothers Investment Services, which runs $3bn (€2.1bn) in a family of socially-responsible funds for US clients, has opened an office in Rome and launched four funds domiciled in Ireland. It is hoping to win business from catholic religious organisations across the continent.
It has hired the Scottish manager Martin Currie to run its global equity portfolio, and Italian group Arca SGR to run its short-term bonds portfolio. London-based Axa Rosenberg will be handling its European equities fund while Rogge Global Partners will sub-advise the Christian Brothers in global bonds.
The firm, which hires professional asset managers to run its funds according to a screened list of shares, and then puts a socially-responsible "overlay" service on top, has a resolute stance on corporate behaviour it considers unethical.
It has voted against company management 70% of the time at shareholder meetings in the US since July 2003, according to the US voting adviser ProxyDemocracy. That made Christian Brothers more oppositional than 97% of the 107 mutual funds in ProxyDemocracy's database.
For comparison, US mutual fund giant Vanguard has voted against management only 14% of the time.
It has waged public campaigns on executive compensation at companies such as electronics group Cisco Systems, where its resolution calling for a "say on pay" received 48% support in 2007. It withdrew a similar resolution at November's annual meeting after management agreed to discuss the issue.
It has also inveighed against gold miner Newport on practices at its mines. In April, it issued a report congratulating the firm on its progress.
According to documents at its website, the performance of Christian Brothers' funds is varied. In value equities, run by US value manager Dodge & Cox, its fund outperformed its market benchmark during the year to March 31, but its diversified fixed income fund - run by the same manager - lagged the index by more than 7 percentage points.
--write to mcobley@efinancialnews.com
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