The GSA currently has a number of investments managed by Cazenove Capital that indirectly funnel students money into corrupt industries including the arms trade, oil, gambling, tobacco and pharmaceuticals.

 

GSA’s publicised list of investments as of 31st July 2020 can be found here:

https://www.gsa.ac.uk/media/1823378/investments-list-july-2020.pdf

• GSA indirectly invests students’ tuition pay into the arms trade via the Merian UK Alpha Fund’s investment into Barclays. Barclays holds a £7.3 billion share in the global arms sector, ranks amongst the top 10 largest investors in US arms companies, serves as principal banker for three arms companies: VT Group, Cobham and Meggitt and has been part of 50 syndicated loans to the arms sector over the last 10 years and has invested in and gives loans to companies that produce cluster munitions and depleted uranium munitions. Barclays has shares in and lends to companies selling arms to Israel, fuelling a growing humanitarian crisis. The arms industry sells products designed to maim or kill human beings or destroy a country’s assets and infrastructure. This industry fuels war and poverty and undermines development worldwide, contributing to the suffering of millions. 80% of the world’s 20 poorest countries have suffered a major war in the past 15 years, and the human legacy continues long after. Nine of the 10 countries with the world’s highest child mortality rates have suffered from conflict in recent years.
   

• GSA indirectly invests students’ tuition into oil companies, Royal Dutch Shell and BP via investment in the Trojan Income Fund, and into Exxon via JP Morgan American Equity’s investment into Berkshire Hathaway. The fossil fuel industry is riddled with corruption and is unequivocally driving us towards a global climate and humanitarian crisis: we will not keep dangerous climate change at bay without halting our extraction of fossil-fuels. It is morally corrupt and hypocritical to indirectly invest student tuition and staff pensions into means which only make precarious the future for those staff and students.
   

• GSA also indirectly invests students' tuition money into the corrupt pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline via the Trojan Income Fund. The company has been accused of international bribery of doctors and hospitals in China, Syria, Poland, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, encouraging doctors to prescribe antidepressants to underaged patients and committing a multidimensional healthcare fraud consisting of misrepresenting side effects of drugs which has been estimated that it could have caused up to 100,000 heart attacks in the US.

​

​

Among the above mentioned investment funds, GSA also indirectly invests into many other funds, including British American Tobacco via the Trojan Income Fund, GVC Holdings PLC which is the worlds largest betting company via the Trojan Income Fund and Franklin UK Mid Cap Fund GVC. The above is only some of the investments that were more trackable, much of the information regarding investment funds is not readily available through research.

​

The art school ought to be a centre of ecological and moral awareness that not only looks to the future with hope - but looks truthfully upon itself, constantly evolving in order to embody the values that are required to navigate a world in crisis - its investments and pension schemes should reflect the values of its entire student and staff population.

​

​

Of interest to GSA students:

http://www.gsasustainability.org.uk/projects/getting-oil-out-of-university-pensions-and-investments

https://www.facebook.com/GUADC/

 

Sources for above information:

https://www.gsa.ac.uk/media/1823378/investments-list-july-2020.pdf

https://waronwant.org/sites/default/files/blood_banks.pdf

https://www.facing-finance.org/en/database/cases/glaxosmithkline-bribery-corruption-fraud/

https://theecologist.org/2018/may/21/are-you-funding-fracking-and-nuclear-weapon-manufacturing

https://peopleandplanet.org