Calvert Announces New Web-Based Campaign Enlisting Investor Support of Mutual Fund Proxy Disclosure

Calvert Announces New Web-Based Campaign Enlisting Investor Support of Mutual Fund Proxy Disclosure

November 12, 2002

BETHESDA, Maryland – Calvert, the nation’s largest family of socially responsible mutual funds, today launched an investor activism campaign on the Web site designed to encourage investors to support an SEC proposal on mutual fund proxy disclosure. Under the proposed rule, mutual fund companies would have to provide information both on their general policies for proxy voting and on specific proxy votes cast on behalf of their funds. Investors who wish to support the proposal should go to www.calvert.com/commentary.html to use the search tool and sign the letter of support that is automatically forwarded to the SEC.

“We believe that the proposed proxy disclosure rule is a major step forward in providing greater transparency to investors whose proxy assets are held in mutual funds,” says Reggie Stanley, Senior Vice President of Calvert. “Calvert shareholders have always valued the information on voting policies and votes cast that we provide on our web site and we want to encourage them to demand that other fund companies are also voting proxy assets in investors’ best interests as well.”

On www.calvert.com, several tools are available to investors.

Calvert Special Report on Rebuilding Corporate Ethics and Investor Confidence. Calvert also encourages shareholders to sign and send a letter to the SEC, urging the SEC to adopt the proposed proxy disclosure rules. The letter is available at www.calvert.com/sri_5189.html?format=print

New Proxy Disclosure Tool that allows users to see which mutual fund companies currently publish their proxy voting guidelines and proxy voting records.

Comprehensive briefing paper on this issue, is available at www.calvert.com/sri_648.html.

Calvert is one of the largest mutual fund complexes in the Washington D.C. area with approximately $8.4 billion in assets under management. Best known for its family of socially responsible mutual funds, Calvert offers twenty-nine funds that allow individual and institutional investors to pursue a broad range of investment objectives within a single fund family. Calvert launched the Calvert Social Indexä, a benchmark for measuring the performance of large, U.S.-based socially responsible companies. For more information on Calvert, click on www.calvert.com.