Just Say No to Fidelity – Pension money used to fund Tories

Just when you feel that the British Financial Services industry cannot sink any lower in public esteem, we learn that leading investment manager Fidelity is giving the Conservative Party vast amounts of money. Hat trick thingy to Tom at “Capital and Labour”.

In the last 3 years they have made a series of donations worth £320, 000. This is just absolutely disgraceful. Fidelity is the fund manager for a number of Local Authority Pension funds. From the top of my head I think this includes Bromley, Haringey, Norfolk, Ealing, Greenwich and Buckingham County Council. So the profits from trade union LGPS pensioners are being used to subsidise the Conservative Party!

No fund managers should support political parties, it is fundamentally wrong. There is a terrible conflict of interest in Conservative run Councils such as Bromley. How can they be seen to properly employ a fund manager such as Fidelity to run their pension scheme when that fund manager donates huge amounts of money to their political party? I assume that National Conservative party funds were used to pay towards the cost of last year’s Parliament by-election in Bromley? This is potentially corrupt and corrupting.

I can’t find any mention of this financial support for the Tories on the Fidelity website or literature (no doubt it will be hidden somewhere). Their governance statement makes no mention of Political Party funding. If there is nothing wrong with this why don’t they publicise the fact?

The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) “Towards Better Corporate Governance” policy which despite being a bit wishy- washy (no comment) makes it clear that they would not normally support donations to Politician Parties. I assume that Fidelity is a business member. There is obviously now a reputational risk of investing in or employing Fidelity.

Pension funds and individual investors (they may also manage your private pension, life assurance or PEP/ISA/unit trust/investment trust) should consider pulling out of Fidelity and transferring funds to other providers if they continue to support the Tories. It is just plain wrong. The arrogance of these people is beyond belief. Write to the administrators of your investment company to see if they use Fidelity. I will be contacting my fellow UNISON member nominated pension trustees and representatives to see what we can do about this.

This is yet another reason why there needs to be real reform of the Local Government Pension Scheme governance and why trained and supported staffside representatives on pension investment panels are desperately needed.

While we are at it here is a link to the American website “Fidelity out of Sudan” which makes some very damaging allegations against Fidelity.