A Palestinian flag flies over the pro-Palestinian encampment set up at the University of Toronto campus, in Toronto, on May 26.A resolution to the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Toronto may rest on how far administrators are willing to go to provide more information about where university money is invested and whether they will consider divesting from companies connected to weapons manufacturing.
UTAM doesn’t have direct investments in individual companies but places the university’s money with 44 different fund managers around the world, including in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Brazil. The fund managers invest the university’s money in pools of assets made up of large numbers of underlying stocks or other assets, and they treat the specific mix, which can change frequently, as a corporate secret.
The University of British Columbia, like U of T, uses fund managers to handle its endowment, estimated at $2.8-billion. But UBC also provides disclosure at the individual equity level. According to its website, there were more than 1,100 equities in its endowment with allocations greater than 0.01 per cent of the portfolio, as of June 30, 2023. Microsoft was the largest equity holding at 1.28 per cent of the portfolio and more than 900 companies made up between 0.01 and 0.
In May, a coalition associated with the protest movement at U of T produced a report looking at what the university’s fund managers have disclosed in their filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It found that some of the fund managers had investments in arms manufacturers. But as Mr. Rodgers points out, that doesn’t necessarily indicate anything about the subset of investments held by U of T.
U of T says it abides by the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investing, which makes environmental, social and governance factors central to its investing strategy. The university said it also upholds those principles when selecting its investment managers and in its reporting and disclosure.