Pensioenfonds ABP bought additional shares in fossil fuel producers this year, while it announced last year that it would stop doing so. It Financial Daily calculated that in the first half of this year it involved approximately 285 million euros in shares, but an ABP spokesperson cannot confirm that amount. The pension fund says it has sold around 5 billion euros in fossil shares so far, so more than it has purchased.
In October last year, after great public pressure, ABP announced that it would stop investing in producers of oil, gas and coal. “We are selling the investments step by step,” wrote the largest pension fund in the Netherlands. According to the spokesperson, this is still true, but for technical reasons it is inevitable that fossil shares are sometimes added. These include companies such as BP, TotalEnergies and Eni, it writes FD.
This is because ABP has part of its money invested in jars together with other pension funds that still invest in fossil companies. ABP is busy ‘unbundling’ that money, but that takes time, says the spokesperson. She doesn’t think last year’s announcement was too firm. “We are also phasing out, but not all at once. There is no stop button to press.”
The roughly 5 billion euros in fossil shares that have been sold so far, is one third of the total that ABP owned in shares in fossil companies. The pension fund says it is still on track with the sale, but cannot say when all shares will be sold. “These are competition-sensitive matters, I am not allowed to make any statements about them.”
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