Arms trade boosting council staff pension pots

MORE than £100m of North Wales workers’ pension pots have been invested in some of the world’s biggest aerospaceand defence manufacturers.

A Freedom of Information request has found that scheme that covers Gwynedd, Conwy and Anglesey council staff retirement funds has sizeable shareholdings in aerospace and defence companies, including BAE Systems, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.

The Gwynedd Pension Fund - which also manages Conwy and Anglesey workers’ cash has invested over £22m in companies supplying Saudi Arabia’s ongoing conflict in Yemen.

Llandudno peace campaigner Chris Draper, who submitted the FOI, said: “I doubt whether local council workers would be happy to discover so much of their pension money is invested in weapons of war.”

A spokesperson on behalf of Gwynedd Pension Fund said in a statement: “The Gwynedd Pension Fund (which includes Gwynedd, Ynys Môn and Conwy councils) does not invest directly in ‘arms’ companies.

“However, like many other LGPS funds, we do invest in pooled funds: it is by way of our investments in these that we have indirect investment in so-called ‘aerospace and defence sector’ companies such as Airbus, Boeing, Caterpillar, Cisco, General Electric, Rolls-Royce, SAP,Siemens, Subaru, Volkswagen and Walmart.”

“The Gwynedd Pension Fund (which is administered for over 40 other employers) and Gwynedd’s scheme managers have a fiduciary duty to all those employers, their staff and pensioners. This duty primarily guides the Pension Committee’s decisions. The Fund does not avoid companies for purely non-financial reasons, not least because this could lead to a legal challenge.

“The Pension Fund’s assets are invested to provide a financial return to ensure the financial security of its members and reduce the costs to the employers, which then reduces the cost to the tax payers of the Gwynedd, Conwy and Môn. This is an important social responsibility of which the Pensions Committee is acutely aware.”