The 63-year-old educational consultant said she was horrified to learn recently that five Vanguard funds invest in a Chinese company exploring for oil in Sudan.
So Prindle cast a yes vote on an activist-backed proxy ballot proposal on human rights that Vanguard mailed to millions of its investors, leading up to a July 2 special shareholder meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz.
A handful of large fund companies - among them T. Rowe Price Group and TIAA-CREF - are now confronting and even embracing the idea that they should screen out investments that may be linked to human-rights abuses abroad.
The willingness of some mainstream companies to address issues they once tried to avoid is creating new options for investors. In the past, the big players mostly left socially responsible investing to boutique firms whose funds aren't typically included in employers' 401(k) plans.
"Common sense tells us that a lot of large asset managers, 401(k) plans, and the household names in the investment world are not going to want to be seen as ignoring the attention that's being focused on issues like genocide in Sudan," said Jane Meacham, a research analyst with RiskMetrics Group, a financial risk management firm.
Vanguard says it has begun screening companies across all its 157 funds to identify any company "whose direct involvement in crimes against humanity or patterns of egregious abuses of human rights could warrant engagement or divestment."
The activist-backed ballot measure affects 30 Vanguard funds. It would go further than the company's screening policy, requiring Vanguard to "institute procedures to prevent holding investments in companies that, in the judgment of the board, substantially contribute to genocide or crimes against humanity."
The Vanguard proxy campaign is led by Boston-based Investors Against Genocide. The nonprofit says the proxy measure is needed because, even though Vanguard has a screening policy, the company has continued investing in a company that's a lightning rod for activists. Vanguard's latest holdings reports, as of March 31, list five funds with shares of PetroChina Co.
