JTA
Is finance giant Morningstar boycotting Israel? A new BDS battlefront emerges in investing world
by Asaf Shalev
February 8, 2022

After brushing aside allegations of anti-Israel bias for nearly a year, a multibillion-dollar investment research firm has done an about-face, hiring an outside law firm to investigate the company’s practices. The change of tack at Chicago-based Morningstar came in early December, about two weeks before the Illinois Investment Policy Board was set to place the company on its blacklist, which would have barred state-run pension systems from investing in Morningstar. According to complaints first raised by Jlens, which advocates for Israel in the investing world, Morningstar’s subsidiary Sustainalytics steers investors away from Israel by improperly inflating the country’s risk and controversy ratings — which, for Jlens and its allies, amounts to an antisemitic boycott of Israel. READ MORE