A wave of protesters on university campuses nationwide have called on schools to divest their endowments from companies linked to Israel ’s military in recent weeks—a controversial idea that could prove difficult and costly due to some targeted companies' vast size and reach, though schools have chosen to divest from industries or countries in the past.
Universities typically provide only high-level details about their assets: For example, Columbia—an epicenter of the protests—offers limited information about how its $13.6 billion endowment is invested, and while protesters havein Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, as well as BlackRock exchange-traded funds held by a university-related trust, this only accounts for a small fraction of the school’s assets.
Fully divesting from large firms like Amazon and Alphabet could prove difficult since many are included in investment products such as mutual funds or ETFs—including some funds that just track the S&P 500 or other stock indexes. Pulling out of such investment portfolios could lead to transaction costs and investment penalties, says Todd Ely, a professor at the University of Colorado-Denver who studies nonprofit finances., avoiding large firms like BlackRock who manage such funds could also lead to “higher costs and more limited investment options,” Ely tells Forbes.
Source: Education Headlines (educationheadlines.net)
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