Breakout Session - Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) of Pension Funds Last April, the Pension Funds’ SRI was on the griddle because the Presidential Council for Future&Vision suggested that corporations need to be enforced to take corporate social responsibilities by strengthening the shareholder’s rights of pension funds. The suggestions provoked a controversy over ‘Pension Fund Socialism’. Korea was late to adopt SRI in pension funds while the pension funds of other countries have a long history of SRI. At the breakout session ‘Pension Funds and SRI’, Jung Jae-young, the senior manager of Pension Fund, brought a closer to the controversy with his comment: “Having Environment, Society and Governance domains as the major evaluation standards will maximize the long-term investment profit since it considers corporate values important. Korean corporations have high ratio of ‘big’ shareholders. Therefore, the influence of Pension Funds is limited.” Ryu Young-jae, the president of Sustinvest, added, “Korea needs to bring SRI factors to attention such as reforming the existing investment culture that only considers short-term profitability and mutual growth.” The scale of Pension Fund of Japan is the largest in the world. Miyai Hiroshi, the senior executive managing director of Nikko Financial Intelligence, introduced, “Japan’s Workers’ Union has been promoting workers to request the managers of Pension Fund to engage in SRI. The driver of capital management has been slowly shifting to the beneficiaries (members) from fiduciaries (managers of Pension Fund). Alexandra Tracy, the general manager at ASrlA, pointed out, “Corporate disclosure in some parts of East Asian capital market is not transparent. It means the market is yet immature. Governments and institutions play crucial roles in expanding SRI in East Asia.”