Friends Ivory & Sime, the socially responsible international asset management firm based in the United Kingdom, launched its first American funds yesterday (MFWire 10/6/99).
The Friends Ivory European Social Awareness Fund, the first Europe-only SRI fund and the
Friends Ivory Social Awareness Fund opened with $25 million and $27 million respectively,
George Walker, president of Friends Ivory Funds told the MFWire.com.
The majority of the shares in the funds are being held by financial planners, RIAs, specialists and 401(k) providers. Effective immediately, Friends Ivory funds is launching a marketing campaign targeted towards RIAs and financial planners. Advertisements will be found in targeted publications. "We didn't feel like we needed to splash our name all over the place," Walker said.
The Journal of Financial Planning,
Co-op America, a not for profit environmental journal,
Quaker Journal and
Worth will contain advertisements from Friends. The Web site for the funds,
FriendsIvoryFunds.com will be launched on February 18.
The selection of companies that are made by Friends managers goes through two screenings, Walker said. First an companies are screened based on their investment potential and second, they are screened based on their fulfillment of certain ethical criteria.
Friends Ivory & Sime uses two types of screens when considering a company as an investment, a positive and a negative. The positive screen seeks out companies that are in line with the values of Friends Ivory & Sime. Some examples would be companies that manufacture environmental products and resist child labor or pay livable wages to employees.
The negative screens look to weed out companies that might make more than 4% of their profit from industries such as tobacco, alcohol or nuclear arms.
Walker said, "We are willing to put our money where our mouths are," 10% of money earned from fees will be donated to charity.
Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE
Subscribe to MFWire.com's News Alerts [click]
Email & Route 
Print 
Raw XML
