In the wake of the ever-widening BP disaster in the Gulf, the company's stock is tanking -- and so far, it's taken $30 million of the value of New York's state pension fund, the third-largest in the country, with it. State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced today that he's suing BP for the loss:
The comptroller accused BP of misleading investors about its safety procedures and its ability to respond to events like the ongiong oil spill.
“We’re going to hold it accountable,” the Democrat said.
The AP reports DiNapoli is angling to be the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit on behalf of BP shareholders:
Robert Whalen, a DiNapoli spokesman, says four pending suits will likely be consolidated, and the [New York pension] fund has experience in similar suits, including a recent settlement with Countrywide Financial.
In case you're curious: The state pension fund puts out annual reports listing its investments and their performance. Here are a few oil-and-gas-related highlights from the 2009 report. (The report lists hundreds of stocks, and there are many more energy-related line items. These are just the ones that jumped out at us, because of their household-name status and/or the size of the pension fund's investments.)
-Chevron Corp: 7,698,784 shares valued at $517,666,219
-Cabot Oil and Gas: 594,785 shares valued at $14,019,982
-Chesapeake Energy Corp: 1,858,650 shares valued at $31,708,569
-ConocoPhillips: 6,003,030 shares valued at $235,078,655
-ExxonMobil Corp: 18,125,534 shares valued at $1,234,348,865
-Halliburton Company: 3,077,890 shares valued at $47,614,958
-Occidental Petroleum Corp: 2,913,414 shares valued at $162,131,489
-XTO Energy Inc.: 2,564,328 shares valued at $78,519,723
