sawyl | Long read on ethical investment

Fascinating Guardian Long Read piece on Dr Bronwyn King and her campaign to get insurance companies and pension funds to deinvest in big tobacco.

To those who challenged that tobacco stocks were historically good performers, King had a brisk rejoinder: "If a business can live with six million deaths and externalising €2tn in health costs a year while employing mainly children, then it probably won’t find it difficult making money. All it has to do is adjust its moral compass."

The piece raises a series of excellent moral points, not least the notion that, in acting in accord with the best interests of its shareholders, investment funds have a duty to consider more than simple financial returns; thus, the doctors working at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre might not want their money to be invested in an industry that causes the very diseases they've spent their careers treating...