The head of sustainable funds at the biggest Nordic bank says money managers in the industry should be excluding Facebook from their portfolios if they’re serious about ethical investing. Sasja Beslik, who heads the sustainable finance unit inside Nordea Bank’s $370 billion asset management business, this week decided to divest holdings of the social network giant. He said the move was provoked by what he characterised as an “unresponsive” approach at Facebook to Nordea’s efforts to get clarity on how the Cambridge Analytica scandal was being handled. Based on the lack of feedback from Facebook and Nordea’s own investigation, Beslik says he now thinks there shouldn’t be “a single serious sustainable fund in the world that takes itself seriously that should have a holding in that [Facebook]”. Beslik says it can sometimes be financially painful in the short term to “walk the talk” in sustainable investing. But even if it hurts, “that’s the entire point. No pain, no gain.” 

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