Two months after declaring the Philippines a country unable to
support institutional investment, Californian pension fund Calpers,
one of the world's biggest investors, announced that it had made a
mistake and that it did in fact consider the country a "recommended
permissible market".
Its controversial decision to withdraw from the Philippines in
February resulted from a review of the criteria of its permissible
country list begun in August 1999. These aim to assess which
emerging markets can support institutional investment. Following
the review, Calpers' investment committee decided in principle to
adopt recommendations to include measurements of political
stability, transparency, and "productive labour practices" in its
evaluation criteria.
Calpers denies that its decision to include these factors was
ethically motivated, arguing that they contribute towards a
market's ability to support investment, but its exact definition of
the criteria led to widespread criticism from the southeast Asian
media of moralistic posturing by the pension fund....
