Teachers Fund Sells All Its Maxxam Shares

The California State Teachers Retirement System has sold all its shares in Maxxam Inc. amid environmentalists’ calls for divestiture. The pension fund, the company’s 10th-largest institutional shareholder, sold 71,400 shares for about $3.3 million as part of “normal portfolio rebalancing” last month, said James Mosman, chief executive of the state-run fund, which has more than $72 billion in assets. He said the fund sold a total of $160 million in stocks. The Maxxam shares were held in a passive index at the fund, he said, meaning they had not been actively selected by portfolio managers. Environmentalists have asked pension managers to sell Maxxam shares to protest logging policies by the Houston-based company’s Pacific Lumber unit. However, Mosman said the fund was not responding to such pressure. Maxxam shares lost 25 cents to close at $47 on the American Stock Exchange.