Bye bye Fidelity

Today should mark the end of our relationship with Tory-supporting fund manager Fidelity. I am off to meet our financial adviser to arrange moving from Fidelity's fund platform onto Cofunds and my other half is cancelling our direct debit to Fidelity. Given Fidelity's refusal to give us a straight answer about whether they would continue to financially support the Conservative Party we felt we had no other choice.

Having been alerted to Fidelity's £415,500 donations to the Tories since 2004, £95,000 in 2007 alone, I subsequently discovered that they also employ a Tory MP as a consultant, and have hosted the Tory business liaison group The Enterprise Forum (though the link disclosing this has vanished!). Clearly there are some senior links between Fidelity and the Tories.

I don't see why any Labour supporter (or Lib Dem, or Green, but maybe SWP) would want to be either on Fidelity's fund platform or investing in any of its products. There are equally good non-Tory alternatives out there.

I have alerted both my local CLP and the Labour chair of my local authority's pension fund to the issue. I have also raised it with national officers at a number of trade unions whose members are pension funds trustees and highlighted it to a few global contacts who also work with trustees. And I also got the tip that the donations have been raised in parliament.

That's it as far as I am concerned, though I will keep an eye on the Electoral Commission register of donations and post up info about any further donations. Plus I'm still waiting to see how they voted on Caledonia's £60K Tory donation. If you want to read our past correspondence with Fidelity and other related info click here.