August 19, 2004

Funding Terror 2

Here's another update on the situation involving the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System and a think tank's effort to get public-employee pension funds to divest from companies that do business in terror-supporting countries such as Iran. As I reported here on Monday, the TCRS refused to provide the Center for Security Policy with its investment portfolio information - even though the information is supposed to be available to the public, and even though 87 of the nation's 100 largest public-employee pension funds provided the information.

Today, I spoke with a TCRS representative and the TCRS is preparing for me a complete list of the pension fund's investment portfolio in corporate stocks and bonds, including the names of the companies the pension fund is invested in and the amounts. I'm not sure if that means dollar amounts or the number of shares. I expect to pick that report up on Friday, but likely won't have a blog report on it until Monday.

Overall, the TCRS pension fund for state employees and Tennessee public school teachers has a $19.1 billion investment portfolio, according to its latest annual report, and the TCRS also controls a $3.1 billion pension fund for Tennessee's political subdivisions (cities and counties). That's $22.2 billion in total public employee pension-fund investment in Tennessee. Of that, some $10.95 billion is invested in corporate stocks and corporate bonds.

It is my intention to share the information with the Center for Security Policy in order to determine how much of the TCRS's pension fund investments are in companies that do business in terrorist-supporting nations.