Published: March 11, 2022

At LGPS Central we have taken the decision to instruct our external managers not to increase our existing exposures to Russia (and Belarus) and are engaging with them to bring about our exit from our existing Russian exposures subject to the challenges posed by market suspensions and the sanctions regime imposed by the international community. Our fiduciary responsibility remains at the forefront of our deliberations.

The likely event of reduced transparency and weakened governance in Russian corporates raises serious ESG concerns and compromises our ability and the ability of our managers to analyse Russian stocks and bonds in the holistic manner expected of responsible investors.

We have also undertaken to review our portfolios to identify indirect exposures to Russia and feed these insights into our engagement, voting and ongoing discussions with our external managers.

We stand with others who are calling for a swift and peaceful end to the conflict, but nevertheless recognise that any resolution may take time and result in a prolonged period of uncertainty.

We will continue to closely monitor the situation in Ukraine and will review our position as and when events take a substantively different turn, and the isolation of the Russian economy is deemed no longer necessary.