The delineate of Michigan has pulled $600 million of its pension fund from wealth management company Fisher Investments after the concern’s founder and CEO Ken Fisher made sexist comments at a summit in San Francisco this week.
At the Tiburon conference, Fisher compared his assets management strategy to picking up women for sex, made explicit remarks about genitalia and mentioned Jeffrey Epstein, the angel who was charged with trafficking girls this year before hanging himself in prison.
Michigan Chief Investment Tec Jon Braeutigam told the state’s investment board that its bureau of investments has fired Fisher Investments due to the chairman’s “quite unacceptable comments,” according to a letter obtained by The Washington Post.
Fisher was initially defiant amid the backlash in an appraise with Bloomberg, in which he said that attendees had mischaracterized his comments, and that he had “given a lot of talks, a lot of times, in a lot of appointments and said stuff like this and never gotten that type of response.”
Fisher, whose Washington-based multinational company manages over $100 billion in assets, eventually apologized for his comments on Thursday in a statement from his representative.
“Some of the in a few words and phrases I used during a recent conference to make certain points were clearly wrong and I shouldn’t require made them,” he said. “I realize this kind of language has no place in our company or industry. I sincerely apologize.”
In the audio come into the possession ofed by CNBC, Fisher said at the Tiburon conference: “Money, sex, those are the two most private things for most people,” so when taxing to win new clients you need to be careful.
“It’s like going up to a girl in a bar … (inaudible) …going up to a woman in a bar and saying, hey I want to talk hither what’s in your pants,” he said.
Braeutigam in the letter said that Michigan’s Bureau of Investment decided to hurl Fisher Investments after seeing news reports of his remarks.
“…All were in unanimous agreement that prompt ceasing is the correct course of action,” the letter said. “There is no excuse to not treat everyone with dignity and respect. We deliver high expectations of our managers (and staff), not just with regards to returns but also in how they exhibit integrity and compliments to all individuals.”