WILL Wall Street ever let go of guns?

That question has come up before — after the shootings in Newtown, in Orlando, in Las Vegas, and on and on.

Now, with the nation’s emotions raw over the killings in Florida last week, evidence is mounting that investors may be rethinking their long, fraught relationship with the firearms industry.

On Thursday, the day the head of the National Rifle Association issued a searing rebuttal to calls for stricter gun control, the nation’s largest privately owned bank announced it would stop issuing NRA-sponsored credit cards. Insurance giant MetLife Inc. followed Friday by saying it’d stop offering NRA discounts.

The investment giant BlackRock Inc. said it was exploring ways to cull gun companies from the portfolios of clients who no longer wish to invest in them. In Florida, site of the latest tragedy, teachers expressed frustration that their retirement funds own gun stocks, following revelations that holdings included the maker of the assault rifle used to kill 17 students and educators at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Activists have made similar appeals for years, only to see all the moments pass. Taken together, the recent developments suggest that, at least for the moment, the financial community senses the rising public pressure — and is positioning itself accordingly.

“Now is the time for the financial services industry to step off the sidelines and take a stand,” said Jonas Kron, director of shareholder advocacy at Trillium Asset Management, which focuses on sustainable investments.

MetLife is dropping its program of offering discounts on home and auto insurance to NRA members. Chubb Ltd. said Friday it gave notice three months ago that it will pull out of an NRA-linked program to offer firearms liability insurance.

The bigger question is whether other investors, both big and small, are willing to exit investments that have plunged in value over the past year. Gun sales — and gun stocks — have tumbled since Donald Trump rose to the presidency. The thinking was that his administration, unlike the previous one, would be unlikely to push for stricter gun controls given its support from the NRA.

A quiet backlash has been building for years. Some major endowments, such as the $10 billion University of California fund, sold guns stocks after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut, which prompted calls for more gun control.

“We continue to monitor this issue and take it very seriously,” said Dianne Klein, a spokeswoman for the university system. Others are, too. On Thursday, the First National Bank of Omaha said it wouldn’t renew its contract with the NRA for a branded credit card, because of “customer feedback.”

It isn’t clear how many of the NRA’s nearly five million members hold the credit card. Representatives of the NRA didn’t immediately return a request for comment. The Second Amendment-rights organization continues to offer a prepaid card, issued by Republic Bank & Trust Co. The bank didn’t reply to request for comment on the matter.

More institutions, including pension funds and municipalities, are demanding that their portfolios exclude companies that make guns and other weapons. Many of the funds, such as the giant CalSTRS, represent one of the groups most affected by school shootings: teachers.

More than $845bn of US institutional assets restricted investments were in weapons as of the start of 2016, according to data from US SIF, the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment. That number soared more than 1,000 per cent following the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012, from $74bn at the start of 2012.

Rommel Dionisio, managing director of research at Aegis Capital Corp., said that given the outcry over the latest shooting, “it would certainly not surprise me to see other state funds divest their investment holdings in the industry.” Still, that might not depress gun stocks given other investors will probably still be willing to buy them.

For the moment, holders are not just dumping shares of gun makers. Some are trying to exert pressure from within: Shareholders have filed at least three proposals at sellers or makers of guns in the current proxy season. The proposals ask American Outdoor Brands Corp., maker of Smith & Wesson; Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc.; and Sturm Ruger & Co. to report on steps they’re taking to improve gun safety and to mitigate the harm associated with gun products.

The proposals were filed by religious groups affiliated with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, whose members includes 300 institutional investors that manage $400bn in assets. Some institutions, such as BlackRock which manages $6.3 trillion, are privately contacting gun companies to make their case.

“Given our inability to sell shares of a company in an index, even if we disagree with management, we focus on engaging with the company and understanding how they are responding to society’s expectations of them,” said BlackRock spokesman Ed Sweeney. “We will be engaging with weapons manufacturers and distributors to understand their response to recent events.”

He added that BlackRock works with clients who want to exclude weapons makers from their portfolios. BlackRock manages more than $200bn of assets that are screened for weapons ownership and other value-based issues.

Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, wrote to portfolio companies last year, warning that in addition to making money, they must also be aware of the impact on society. Sweeney declined to comment on whether BlackRock would vote in favor of the shareholder proposals at proxy meetings this year.

Bloomberg /The Washington Post Service

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, February 26th, 2018