Farallon Dumps Corrections Corporation of America

After national campus pressure, world's fourth largest hedge fund divests from controversial for-profit private prison corporation

For Immediate Release: Friday, May 19, 2006
Contacts: Bob Libal (Grassroots Leadership), (512) 971-0487, bob@notwithourmoney.org
Silky Shah (Grassroots Leadership), (512) 971-0486, silky@notwithourmoney.org
Evan Cobb (GESO), (203) 606-3127, evan.cobb@yale.edu

National - Following a year-long campaign by students, graduate teachers, faculty, and community members, Farallon Capital Management, LLC has fully divested from Corrections Corporation of America (NYSE:CXW), the controversial for-profit prison company.

Farallon, a hedge fund that manages many college and university endowment investments, has sold its remaining shares in CCA, a company cited for abuse of prisoners. A year ago, Farallon held almost $90 million in CCA stock, making it one of CCA's largest investors.

The national “Dump Farallon” campaign, which originated at Yale University, was coordinated by the Yale Graduate and Employees Student Organization (GESO) and by Grassroots Leadership's Not With Our Money! campaign. Grassroots Leadership is a national organization that works to abolish for-profit private prisons, jails and detention centers.

“We applaud Farallon for taking this step toward social responsibility,” said Silky Shah, co-director of the Not With Our Money! campaign. “We hope other investment firms such as Lehman Brothers will follow Farallon's lead and and refuse to do business with the for-profit private prison industry.”

In 2001, Grassroots Leadership's Not With Our Money! campaign, a network of student and community activists working to end the use of prisons for profit, successfully forced Sodexho, a campus caterer and at the time the largest CCA shareholder, to fully divest from the corporation and to withdraw its representative from the CCA board of directors.

Sarah Haley, a GESO member and primary author of the report Endowing Injustice, which first exposed Yale's investment in CCA through Farallon holdings, welcomed the news.

“I am delighted that Yale and Farallon have listened to the outcry against CCA and have done the right thing. On Yale's campus and at colleges around the country, teachers and students were firmly opposed to this investment,” Haley said. “This is a major victory for the values of higher education.”

At Yale, GESO collected over 1250 signatures in opposition to the CCA investment. Students and faculty at eight other colleges and universities that had invested in Farallon also organized for divestment from CCA.

The Graduate Employees and Students Organization works to represent and promote the interests of graduate students at Yale. GESO is a leader in the national movement to unionize graduate students.

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