The nine-month student campaign for divestment from Unocal, a stock previously held by the University, is over. The University's investment manager, Richard Mayo, sold Unocal stock last week.
Mayo, a partner in the investment management firm Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo and Company, sold 50,000 shares of Unocal stock totaling $1.6 million of University investments. Mayo is one of several money managers chosen by the University's Investment Management Company to oversee the University's $1.7 billion endowment.
The Unocal stock severely dropped after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center towers. The stock bottomed out in late September but recently has been on an upswing. However, the stock's climb back up did not bring it back to its original value.
The investment manager made the decision to sell completely independent of the Board of Visitors. The Board does not deal with the everyday trading of University stocks, Board secretary Alexander "Sandy" Gilliam Jr. said.
"The Board leaves day-to-day investments to the investment managers," Gilliam said. "It was purely a decision made by the investment manager."
But student leaders insist that the decision to sell was not solely a financial decision.
"The investment manager knew about the controversy on Grounds," said Free Burma Coalition President Andy Price. "After a nine-month public campaign it is a victory for us to get the endowment to sell their stock."
Mayo told The Daily Progress Tuesday that he was influenced by the student campaigns and controversy on Grounds.
"You've got to respect what your client's pressures are," Mayo said. "If I have something just as good [as Unocal] that I could own, why leave [the issue] out there festering."
"It's a victory because they didn't just divest because the money manager took into account Unocal's actions and our efforts," Free Burma Coalition Campaign Manager Michael Freedman-Schnapp said.
"If the experts agree that Unocal is in the wrong, and other natural gas companies are in the right and are more profitable, then there is no reason for the University to hang onto Unocal," Student Council President Abby Fifer said.
Fifer and Price have been working together to push the University to divest from Unocal. They were scheduled to report to the Board on Friday about their desire for the University to sell its stock in Unocal.
"We plan to use the case of Unocal in Burma as a case study to further the dialogue we've been having about a standard of ethical investments," Fifer said.
The Free Burma Coalition will continue pressing for a creation of a committee on ethical business practices, a code of conduct for outside money managers and "ways to harness stockholder resolutions," Freedman-Schnapp said.
"I'm very excited for the opportunity to speak with the Board," Price said. "I look forward to hearing their opinions."
Unocal is an oil company that has been accused of hiring corrupt Burmese soldiers to protect a natural gas pipeline in Southeast Asia. A California federal judge has ruled that evidence suggests soldiers have raped, murdered and enslaved local villagers. The judge declined to rule that Unocol intentionally encouraged these practices.
Concerned students formed a chapter of the Free Burma Coalition at the University last year. Their worries were brought to the attention of Council, which unanimously passed a resolution this fall calling on the University to divest from Unocal. Seven Nobel Peace Laureates later endorsed the resolution.
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