TIAA-Cref has become the first large US asset manager to sell stakes in four Asian oil groups over concerns about human rights abuses in Sudan, a move that will increase pressure on other investors to sever ties with those companies. TIAA-Cref...said on Monday that it had divested holdings in PetroChina, CNPC Hong Kong and Sinopec...and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation... TIAA-Cref, which manages pensions and supplies financial services for academic, medical and research institutions, said it had made good on its promise to sell stakes in companies that “refuse to acknowledge the genocide [in Sudan] and engage in a productive dialogue about it”. Hye-Won Choi, TIAA-Cref’s head of corporate governance,...said TIAA-Cref would retain its stake in Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil group, after the company engaged in “constructive dialogue” and “took some responsibility to remedy the situation in Sudan”.