Investing in "Ethical" Uranium

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Mining giant BHP-Billiton's proposed acquisition of WMC Resources, a major uranium mining company, poses no problem for the global ethical investment fund Sustainable Asset Management (SAM). While some ethical funds avoid both BHP-Billiton shares, following the Ok Tedi environmental disaster in Papua New Guinea, and WMC shares, due to its uranium project, SAM holds both. SAM's research manager, Francis Grey, explained that while they don't agree with uranium or nuclear power, company projects owned before 1994 do not affect SAM's "ethical" rating system. "We have an expression of BS, meaning before sustainability, a time when it was a different world and they did all sorts of different things," he said. A few years ago, SAM angered tobacco control activists by including British American Tobacco in their "ethical" fund index.