State Investment board holds on to BP stock

BP's catastrophic oil spill sent its stock price plummeting earlier this summer, as many investors fled the company. But the State of Wisconsin's Investment Board stuck with BP, owning almost 19.5 million shares at the end of June.

That’s more than double what the state owned in BP stock at the same time last year.

It's also only about a half million shy of the 20-million shares of BP the Investment Board owned at the end of March, the last reporting period before the oil spill. Investment Board Spokeswoman Vicki Hearing says it's fair to say the spill did not prompt a major sell off by the state.

Hearing stresses that she can't say why the individual fund managers who handle the state's investments chose to buy and hold BP. But she says managers consider a variety of worst case scenarios with any stock, including how a major disaster could affect the price.

Hearing says they also consider a company's assets and how it's expected to fare long-term. Hearing says this isn't the first time a major company has had to deal with adversity.

The value of the Investment Board's BP stock shares was almost $111-million at the end of June, which was down about $80-million compared to three months ago. The state also owned about $46-million in BP bonds.

The Investment Board manages the assets that fund Wisconsin's public employee retirement system. That system covers thousands of Wisconsin residents, from politicians, to prison guards, to university employees.

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