Housewife Kathy Kerridge opened her first individual retirement account with Fidelity Investments in 1987 and now owns shares in various mutual funds run by the industry’s largest firm.
But the mother of two said yesterday that she may consider pulling her money out if Fidelity doesn’t act soon to pressure the Occidental Petroleum Corp. into canceling its drilling for oil on ancestral lands sacred to the U’Wa tribal people in eastern Colombia.
Fidelity controls about 30 million – or about 8.5 percent – of Occidental’s shares, according to a coalition of human-rights and environmental groups that wants Fidelity to use its clout with Occidental to stop the drilling or, alternatively, divest its $700million worth of company stocks.
Led by the Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, the group is planning simultaneous protests today outside Fidelity’s headquarters in Boston, 20 other U.S. cities and in Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, Japan, Mexico, the Czech Republic and Netherlands, members said yesterday.
Kerridge, of Venicia, Calif., believes the U’Wa tribe has the right to keep its land free from Occidental, which has Colombian authorities on its side.
“I have contacted Fidelity to express my concern, and I’m going to very carefully watch what they do,” she said in an interview arranged by the coalition. “I do not want my money to be supporting something like this.”
Fidelity spokesman Vincent Loporchio, however, said the company’s fund managers “have a fiduciary responsibility to invest fund assets in companies that have the highest likelihood of stock-price appreciation.”
The coalition said it’s not just targeting Fidelity. It said it will continue to dog Vice President Al Gore, who inherited as much as $500,000 worth of Occidental stock from his father.
