New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s call for NYC to divest its pension fund investments linked to Israel would cost the city tens of billions of dollars to implement.By World Israel News StaffA push to restrict New York City pension investments tied to Israel could cost the city’s pension funds more than $37 billion over a decade, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League and its affiliate JLens.The report examined the potential financial impact of applying Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions-aligned investment restrictions to the city’s pension funds.The analysis focused on 47 large American companies targeted by the BDS movement for doing business in Israel, including Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft.ADL and JLens said the report compared two hypothetical large-cap US equity portfolios over a 10-year historical period: one broadly diversified and one excluding the 47 companies.The analysis found an annualized performance gap of about two percentage points between the two portfolios.The report then applied that historical gap to New York City pension funds’ estimated large-cap US public equity allocations over a future 10-year period.It estimated that BDS-aligned restrictions could result in about $37.55 billion in forgone value from 2025 to 2035.The findings come amid debate in New York over Israel-related pension investments.Mayor Zohran Mamdani has supported the BDS movement and has backed divesting city pension funds from Israel-related investments.The city’s pension system, one of the largest public pension systems in the United States, manages more than $300 billion in assets across five funds.“While some in New York, including Mayor Mamdani, have publicly supported the BDS movement, an international campaign aimed at isolating and delegitimizing the world’s only Jewish state, this analysis highlights the potentially serious financial consequences of applying BDS-aligned divestment strategies to the city’s pension funds,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO and national director.“This research shows that divestment strategies guided by the BDS campaign can be bad fiscal policy, and we believe that they risk contributing to an environment where Jewish New Yorkers are already targeted and marginalized,” Greenblatt said.The report, titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on the New York City Pension Funds: Estimating BDS’s Financial Toll on New York City Employees, Retirees and Beneficiaries,” was prepared by JLens with review and input from subject matter experts.JLens previously released a 2024 analysis of university endowments, estimating that a BDS-aligned strategy applied to the 100 largest endowments could lead to $33 billion in forgone gains over a decade.“The BDS movement has migrated from college campuses to city halls as universities have become less hospitable to anti-Israel activism. But the investment math doesn’t change with the venue,” said Ari Hoffnung, JLens managing director, ADL senior adviser on corporate advocacy and a former New York City deputy comptroller.“Our 2024 research showed that BDS-aligned strategies could cost university endowments $33 billion; this analysis shows that if our assumptions prove true they could cost NYC pension funds more than $37 billion,” Hoffnung said.“Whether the target is a university endowment or a public pension fund, the financial consequences will be real — and they will fall on the people these institutions serve: from students and faculty to teachers, police officers, and firefighters.”The analysis broke down the projected forgone value across the city’s five pension funds. It estimated $15.09 billion for the Teachers’ Retirement System, $10.91 billion for the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, $7.13 billion for the Police Pension Fund, $3.02 billion for the Fire Pension Fund and $1.41 billion for the Board of Education Retirement System.The combined estimate was about $37.54 billion.Joshua Mitts, the David J. Greenwald Professor of Law at Columbia University, reviewed the report’s methodology.“The findings are economically intuitive. Excluding a significant share of large-cap companies from a broad, market-cap-weighted index changes a portfolio’s exposure and can affect long-term performance,” Mitts said.The post Mamdani-backed NYC divestment of Israel would cost city $37 billion – report appeared first on World Israel News.