Hard blow for Caterpillar. Norway’s main pension fund, separate from the sovereign wealth fund, announced on Wednesday that it had withdrawn from the American group which manufactures construction equipment, industrial turbines and even engines because of the role of its machines in the Israeli offensive. in Gaza.
« Caterpillar has a long history of supplying bulldozers and other equipment that have been used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure to make way for Israeli settlements. », Said Kiran Aziz, head of responsible investments at KLP, quoted in a press release. “ It was also alleged that the company’s equipment was used by the Israeli Defense Forces as part of their military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas attack on October 7 last year », added the leader.
For these two reasons, Caterpillar “ could contribute to violations of human rights and international law in the West Bank and Gaza », Estimates the pension fund.
Gaza: discomfort in Cairo over the Israeli operation
64 million euros of shares held by KLP
As a result, for KLP, which manages $90 billion in assets under management, Caterpillar cannot “ give assurance that she is doing anything in this regard (and therefore he) decided to exclude her from investments “. The fund therefore decided to sell its 728 million Norwegian crowns (64 million euros) of Caterpillar shares.
Note that in April 2021, the fund also withdrew from the French Altice Europe and Alstom as well as 14 other groups, including the giant Motorola, for their involvement in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
This new announcement, however, worried investors little since the share price increased by 0.78% before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, this Wednesday at 12 p.m. (Paris time), at $329. This sale of shares should not really disrupt the group which has a market capitalization of $160 billion. But it remains no less bad, especially for the company’s brand image. Especially since this decision comes just a few months after an announcement from the group in April explaining that it anticipated a decline in its sales in the second quarter after having published a stagnant first quarter.
The war in Gaza enters a new phase
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7 by an attack carried out by Hamas commandos in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count established from official Israeli data. In response, the Israeli army launched an offensive in the Palestinian territory which has so far left 37,658 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the end of the game « intense » fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, while insisting that the war was not over. The experts interviewed by AFP agree that this new phase, after more than eight months of fighting, will be longer than the previous ones. The presence of the Israeli army must thus “ be reduced » on the ground, replaced by reinforced use of “ drones or planes “, according to Omer Dostri, military strategy expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS). According to him, after major air strikes on military structures in Gaza, then a large ground maneuver, a third phase should make it possible to “ dismantle further » Hamas, « to stop smuggling along the Egyptian border and rescue the hostages ».
(With AFP)
