USS’s Public equity investments (June 2022)

USS regularly publish a list of their top 100 public equity investments and along with this, provide a search engine so that one can search to see if they have a holding in individual companies (but if not in top 100 they don’t tell you how much they hold in that company).  See https://www.uss.co.uk/how-we-invest/where-we-invest/public-market-investments

The June 2022 list shows our money is in: 

1. Fossil fuel companies – 50 of the 225 largest fossil fuel companies (up from 45 last year)

7 of the 10 biggest US shale companies 

3 of the 4 world’s biggest fracking companies

2. Alleged Climate Wreckers 

USS holds shares in 41 of the 180 companies reported to have the biggest fossil fuel expansion plans.

https://www.marketforces.org.au/campaigns/super/climatewreckersindex/

3. The banks financing all this 

USS holds shares in 33 of the 60 top organisations reported to be financing the fossil fuel industry and its expansion. With £442m invested in 7 of these banks in their top 100 investments.https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org

To summarise

USS holds shares in over 100 of the companies alleged to be making the most contributions to the climate emergency. They have been saying for years that they prefer to “engage” with companies to encourage change. Really? With more than 100 of them? Where is the track record for all this engagement?

Their top 100 investments have changed a bit – they still have 3 fossil fuel companies, 3 alleged “climate wreckers” and 7 banks funding fossil fuels, but there is a continued shift towards Apple, Amazon, Google/Alphabet etc as well to big Chinese companies.