Victory in the fight against the boycott of Israel:
The financial services giant Morningstar has announced that it will make changes to its investment recommendation policy, in light of claims that it is discriminating against Israel.
In a 117-page report published by the company, it admitted that "errors were discovered" in its activities that led to an unintentional bias against Israel.
Morningstar employs close to 10,000 people at the company's headquarters in Chicago and its branches in cities around the world, including New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Sydney.
In 2020, the company acquired Stainalitics, which provides investment reports and recommendations based on corporate responsibility. This is an area that is gaining popularity in recent years, and in which large entities interested in investing their money do so not only in terms of profit potential, but also in terms of reputation. Their investment objectives in areas such as environmental management, employee rights, community involvement and the like.
The Jewish organization Jlens, which among other things monitors biases against Israel in investment bodies, found that the rankings published by Stainalitics are regularly biased against Israel, by over-focusing on the Palestinian side's conflict and claims, and by "inflating" the alleged risk of investing in Israel.
In doing so, the company in effect pursued a policy of "indirect boycott" against Israel.
In addition, Morningstar was found to have added to its list of sources of information on which it based its reports the pro-Palestinian sites Electronic Intifada and BDSMovement.net.
Similar findings have been reached by the Illinois Investment Policy Board, a regulatory body designed to enforce the anti-boycott law passed by the state.
Following this, shortly before Morningstar was due to enter the council's blacklist - a move that would have prevented state-run pension funds from investing in the company - its management announced the opening of an inquiry into allegations against it, which ended in a policy change decision.
"We have argued all along and we still claim today that Morningstar and Stainalitics do not support the BDS campaign against Israel," said a statement issued by Morningstar chairman Joe Mansuato and CEO Conal Kapoor.
"In retrospect, however, it was found that our initial conclusions on the issue did not take seriously enough the serious concerns about bias against Israel pointed out by Jlens, the Illinois Investment Policy Council and other entities. We treat bias against Israel in any way unacceptable." Said the two.
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