Investments and Corporate Governance
The Teachers’ Retirement Board is responsible for maintaining the Teachers’ Retirement Fund in order to pay benefits to CalSTRS members and their survivors. The board has supported a variety of corporate governance initiatives and actions aimed at keeping the fund stable. A few of the actions taken include:
- Support of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 that brings dramatic new standards to the corporate board rooms and accounting profession.
- Encouragement of the SEC's efforts to adopt tough regulations to rein in lax business practices
- Discussions with individual corporate leaders to express CalSTRS interest in good corporate governance practices.
- Litigation to pursue both financial remedies for the system as well as governance reforms
On May 28, 2009, CalSTRS announced that individual proxy votes will be publicly available online through a partnership with ProxyDemocracy.org, a nonprofit organization that offers free online investment information about portfolio companies.
Like other large pension plans, CalSTRS had previously announced its proxy-vote intentions on selective companies. The addition of online disclosure opens the process to all CalSTRS portfolio companies, allowing other shareholders to know how the pension fund will vote.
As of May 2009, CalSTRS holds stock in over 3,800 North American companies.
On December 17, 2012, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Los Angeles Times reported that California's treasurer, Bill Lockyer, may order CalSTRS to eliminate investments in gun manufacturers.
On January 9, 2013, the Teachers’ Retirement Board Investment Committee directed staff to "begin the process of divestment from firearm companies that manufacture weapons that are illegal in California."
Read more about this topic: Cal STRS
Famous quotes containing the words investments and, investments, corporate and/or governance:
“In youth, love and art. In age, investments and antiques.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“In youth, love and art. In age, investments and antiques.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
““It’s hard enough to adjust [to the lack of control] in the beginning,” says a corporate vice president and single mother. “But then you realize that everything keeps changing, so you never regain control. I was just learning to take care of the belly-button stump, when it fell off. I had just learned to make formula really efficiently, when Sarah stopped using it.””
—Anne C. Weisberg (20th century)
“He yaf me al the bridel in myn hand,
To han the governance of hous and land,
And of his tonge and his hand also;”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)