The Danish pension fund AkademikerPension is now blacklisting Tesla and selling off all its shares in the car manufacturer. The explanation is Elon Musk.
The Danish pension fund AkademikerPension has sold all of its shares in Tesla after blacklisting the American car brand.
The decision is justified by a number of factors regarding Elon Musk's actions as CEO of Tesla.
The pension fund highlights three primary reasons for the sale: Elon Musk's political statements, unclear corporate governance, and lack of respect for employees' right to organize in unions.
– Our patience has run out, says Jens Munch Holst, spokesman for AkademikerPension, to Bloomberg .
– In short, it is our view that Elon Musk is destroying Tesla's brand and value, he adds.
Selling almost half a billion kroner worth of Tesla shares
AkademikerPension, one of Denmark's largest pension funds with over 150 billion Danish kroner under management, has previously had Tesla as a significant part of its stock portfolio.
At its peak, the pension fund owned Tesla shares worth half a billion kroner. Now the last holding has been sold.
The decision from AkademikerPension comes at the same time that Tesla has experienced a significant drop in its share price.
Since the stock's peak, its market value has fallen by almost 50 percent, equivalent to a loss of about $8 trillion.
This has created uncertainty about Tesla's future development. It is still too early to say whether AkademikerPension's sale of Tesla shares will cause similar pension funds to follow suit.
But the development at Tesla is causing frowns elsewhere. Among other things, just across the Øresund at the Swedish Seventh National Pension Fund (AP7).
– This is a worrying development we are seeing around Tesla. We are currently analyzing what the next step in our ownership management will be.
– And it cannot be ruled out that the Seventh AP Fund will blacklist the company if other measures have no effect, says Mikael Lindh Hök, press manager at the Seventh AP Fund.
Tesla has also been in a labor dispute with the union IF Metall for more than a year now. The dispute has gained the union support from other Swedish and Danish unions,
However, the LO organization is more ambivalent about whether it is a good idea to sell all Tesla shares.
– The AP funds have a joint ethics council that works on how ownership can be used to pressure companies to function better.
– In short, we can say that we trust the Council to do its job, but we are of course following developments.
The more time that passes in the conflict, the less appropriate it becomes to have ownership, says Jens Lundberg, press manager at LO.
It is unknown how much money AkademikerPension has lost on the sale of Tesla shares. But they are not alone in collecting massive losses if that were the case. Read more about it here .
