The Washington Post reports that “[t]he Securities and Exchange Commission outlined actions it is contemplating to give U.S investors easier access to overseas markets, but some investor groups worried that it was acting too quickly.”

In a press release on March 25, the SEC proposes to lower the amount of assets investors need to engage directly with non-U.S. brokers, and signing agreements with non-U.S. regulators based on a comparison of the different regulatory regimes.

Critics suggest that the SEC would be better to focus its attention on critical matters at home rather than force changes in the securities markets before the November elections.

Proposed legislation in California seeking to restrict pension fund allocations to sovereign wealth-backed private equity firms is taking center stage in the institutional investor community.

The Responsible Private Equity Investment Act of 2008 bill (AB 1967) is sponsored by Democratic assemblyman Alberto Torrico. The act would prohibit the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) from allocating capital to private equity firms that have sold stakes in their management companies to sovereign wealth funds, mainly those of countries not in compliance with international human rights treaties.

Some sovereign funds are affiliated with countries “with human rights records that are among the worst in the world,” the bill states.

In a letter to PetroChina CEO Jiang Jiemin, Florida State Board of Administration Senior Corporate Governance Officer Michael McCauley and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney call on the largest oil company in China to take responsibility for its actions in the two biggest human rights hot-spots in the world: Burma and the Sudan.

Read the attached letter below.

petrochina-letter-on-sudan-and-burma-from-afl-cio-and-florida.pdf

As reported by the BBC, “Who Pays the Price for Platinum?” indigenous people in several communities in South Africa are being displaced by a platinum mine being developed by Anglo American, a global mining company. Several hundred residents around the third largest mining operation in the world are refusing to be displaced despite efforts by the company and the South African government to force them off their ancestral lands.

“Mining giant Anglo American courts prime ministers and presidents, keen to be seen as leading the way in corporate responsibility,” note the BBC account of the events.