New York Pension Funds Must Divest from Weapons Dealers

New York State Legislature and New York City Council

The New York State Teachers Retirement System (the 22nd biggest pension fund on earth) is invested (see these two PDFs for details: One. Two.) in Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, United Technologies, Honeywell, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Textron. What lesson is this teaching New York's students?

In addition, the New York City Employees Retirement System is invested in United Technologies to the tune of $71,899,692 -- 0.4% -- 703,383 shares. This is one of the top 10 investments of this fund which may be invested in other weapons companies as well that are not in its top 10 investments.

Further, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, which comprises the New York State and Local Employees’ Retirement System (ERS) and the New York State and Local Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS) and which is managed by the Division of Pension Investment and Cash Management in the Office of the State Comptroller, is invested in the following war profiteers:
Boeing 901,785 shares 139,921 value 9/30/16
General Dynamics  1,632,825 shares
Raytheon 906,000 shares
General Dynamics 901,785 shares
Lockheed Martin 765,900 shares
United Technologies 2,331,020 shares
Honeywell 2,908,100 shares

More information on the investments of the New York State Common Retirement Fund is available. As of March 31, 2016, they are as follows. The first number is that of shares, the second the cost of shares, the third the value as of March 31, 2016:
Lockheed Martin Corp. 742,600 56,362,293 164,485,900
Boeing Company/The 1,806,182 83,791,299 229,276,743
BAE Systems plc 3,157,759 19,892,919 23,101,713
Raytheon Company 867,400 48,594,251 106,369,262
Northrop Grumman Corp. 591,303 42,705,500 117,018,864
General Dynamics Corp. 887,380 55,909,841 116,575,111
Airbus Group Nv 449,650 27,737,120 29,898,461
United Technologies Corp. 2,508,971 115,531,837 251,147,997
L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc. 198,900 24,205,180 23,569,650
Thales S.A. 178,352 9,241,933 15,649,558
Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc. 158,416 8,795,662 21,693,487
Rolls-Royce Holdings plc 228,359 2,951,416 2,238,463
Safran S.A. 215,919 15,120,612 15,127,184
Honeywell International, Inc. 2,117,900 77,284,056 237,310,695
Textron, Inc. 687,696 30,201,721 25,073,396

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To: New York State Legislature and New York City Council
From: [Your Name]

Divest from weapons dealers.