The Washington State Investment Board cuts ties with Russia, impacting local state workers
The Washington State Investment Board will cut investment ties with Russia.
The investment board announced in a March 4 press release it was “appalled by the unjustified military assault on Ukraine, and our Board members and staff are dismayed by the human tragedy of this conflict.” It plans to divest its $100 million in passive holdings in Russian companies.
The $100 million makes up for less than 0.10% of the board’s assets, but the funds still support the Russian economy and companies.
In order to eliminate the funding, the investment board announced steps it will take to divest, including restricting any purchase or repurchasing of Russian investments, considering other global investments outside of Russia and supporting stock exchanges’ decisions to exclude Russian investments from stock indexes and trading platforms.
The investment board’s broad passive holdings, including funds connected to Russian investments, fund retirement pensions for Washington state public employees, firefighters, law enforcement officers, teachers and others.
According to the press release, the plan to eliminate assets from Russia will “uphold our fiduciary duty to beneficiaries,” although the press release did not state where the $100 million passive holdings would be going instead.
Chris Phillips, director of Institutional Relations and Public Affairs, wrote that “the exposure from an elimination gets spread across the holdings that remain part of the index.”
Russia-related investments are “too small to have a material performance impact on the overall fund,” Philips wrote when asked if this change will affect Washington workers’ retirement funds.
According to the board’s funding documents that detail where its assets are distributed, the retirement fund assets totaled $168.9 billion of Dec. 31, 2021.
This story was originally published March 18, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The Washington State Investment Board cuts ties with Russia, impacting local state workers."
