8 August 2024

According to a report in the Financial Times, the Universities Superannuation Scheme or USS, which manages the pensions of UK academics, has yielded to pressure from its academic members by selling off £80 million in investments in Israel. With further pressure, it may be persuaded to sell off all its investments in the firms that prop up this genocidal, apartheid state.

UK’s biggest private pension fund dumps £80mn of Israeli assets

USS has ‘materially’ reduced exposure to Israeli stocks and debt following pressure from members

Britain’s biggest private-sector pension fund has sold £80mn of Israeli assets, joining a wave of
global retirement funds retreating from the conflict-ridden region following public pressure.
The £79bn Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), which has more than 500,000 members,
has “materially” reduced its exposure to Israeli investments including government debt and Israeli
currency in the past six months, said two people with knowledge of the matter. USS started selling
down the bond and currency portfolio in March, the people said.
USS declined to comment.
The move followed sustained pressure from the pension fund’s members, concerned over Israel’s
human rights record in occupied Palestinian territories since the start of the war with Hamas last
year.
USS’s members are largely higher education sector workers, including lecturers at prestigious
universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.
In its latest annual report, published last month, USS said it had a “legal duty to invest in the best
financial interests of our members and beneficiaries”.
At the time, it said it had reduced its exposure to the Middle East “in response to the financial risks
that became apparent”. In the past, the pension fund has also stepped back from investing in
tobacco, manufacturing and thermal coal mining.
The war began last October when Hamas carried out a cross-border raid that Israeli authorities
said killed 1,200 people inside Israel. The Jewish state’s ensuing offensive in Gaza has killed almost
40,000 people, according to health authorities in the strip.
The University and College Union (UCU), which represents USS members, said it had raised
concerns with the pension fund about it investing in companies on the UN watchlist of those in
breach of international law.
“We welcome what they have done by disposing of Israeli government bonds and currency, but we
want them to go further and divest the companies that are supporting the Israeli government in its
conflict in Gaza,” said Dooley Harte, a UCU official.
The USS’s move follows similar action by other major global retirement funds that have pulled
back their Israel exposure following pressure from members.
In June, KLP, Norway’s largest private pension manager said it had divested its stake of close to
$70mn in US industrial group Caterpillar, owing to the risk that its equipment was being used to
violate human rights of Palestinians.
Pension Denmark, one of the biggest pension funds in Denmark with more than 800,000
members, has also withdrawn all its investments from Israeli banks.
In the UK, public sector pension plans with cash tied up in groups supplying weapons to Israel are
under pressure to dump their holdings.
However, the conflict has also presented opportunities for some investors to scoop up assets in the
conflict-ridden Middle East region.
In May, the Financial Times reported that local municipal councils in the US were among the most
enthusiastic recent buyers of Israeli bonds. Israel Bonds, the official underwriter for the debt, said
at the time that, since the start of the war on October 7 last year, it had sold more than $3bn of the
debt worldwide, three times the annual average