When mutual fund investor Eric Cohen discovered in September that Fidelity Investments owned a big stake in PetroChina, which has an oil project in war-torn Sudan, he and two friends started FidelityOutOfSudan.com. Their aim: to push the Boston-based fund giant to sell stocks of some companies that do business in Sudan.It wasn't until last month, though, that Cohen learned how much PetroChina stock Fidelity owned: 1.1 billion shares, or slightly more than 5% of PetroChina's outstanding stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. "We went from 'wow' to 'double wow,' " said Cohen, a retired high-tech executive in Lexington, Mass. So far, his group says, nearly 4,000 people have signed a petition that Cohen and his two friends launched Jan. 26, urging Fidelity to divest its Sudan-related holdings because of the killings in the Darfur region.
Fidelity, so far, hasn't budged and has declined to comment on its holdings. But the movement to force mutual funds, pension funds and endowments to pull their investments out of companies active in war-torn Sudan is gaining momentum.
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