Keeping the faith: Socially conscious fund hanging on to BP stake

MMA Praxis Mutual Funds group is holding on to its holdings in BP PLC, despite the company’s role in the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The faith-based fund group, which is part of Mennonite Mutual Aid Inc., prides itself as being a socially conscious investment firm and doesn’t believe that investing in BP goes against its philosophy, said Mark Regier, director of stewardship investing at MMA. As of April 30, the MMA Praxis International Fund Ticker:(MPIAX) invested 1.9% of its portfolio in BP. “There are some financial reasons for not selling,” Mr. Regier said. BP’s stock continued to slide today, and after hitting a 15-month low yesterday. MMA also wants to give BP some time to see how it handles the oil spill before deciding whether to sell out of the company, Mr. Regier said. “I think we will be concerned in four to six months if we don’t know what happened,” he said. “When it comes to a crisis like this there is a tendency to react to the implications, but we want to know what the problem was, what the solution will be — and see what their response is to fixing everything.” MMA Praxis has received calls from clients asking about the firm’s investment in BP, Mr. Regier said. The company has been busy explaining that it uses its position as a shareholder to work with BP. For example, it helped consult with the company on various projects over the years, such as the building of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline last decade. BP consulted with a number of socially conscious firms, such as MMA, to determine how it could better serve the communities affected by the oil pipeline — which stretches from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, through Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and Ceyhan , a port in Turkey. “Every single community the pipeline passed through felt like they got something out of it,” Mr. Regier said. MMA has owned BP in various funds for at least 10 years, he said. “Over the course of time they have been one of the better oil companies from a social perspective,” he said.