‘Shockwave’ court ruling finds NZ Super invested in Airbnb and other companies under ‘unlawful’ rules

Thursday, 16 April 2026

Veteran activist John Minto was one of three people who challenged NZ Super’s investment rules in the High Court. The fund has invested nearly $200m in companies operating in Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The $86 billion NZ Super Fund has been operating under “unlawful” and “unreasonable” rules by investing in companies which operate in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), a court has found.

The High Court decision would force the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation to rewrite the standards that govern where New Zealanders’ pension money is invested, specifically regarding companies accused of contributing to human rights breaches.

In a judgment released on Thursday, Justice Simon Mount found the Guardians failed to meet their legal duty to avoid harming New Zealand’s international reputation.

The ruling came from a legal challenge over the fund’s stakes worth millions of dollars in four major companies, Airbnb, Booking.com, Motorola, and Expedia, who had been operating in the OPT.

Airbnb and Booking.com, for example, advertised homes for rent in Israeli settlements, and Motorola was involved in surveillance of Palestinians and transport infrastructure within the territories.

The fund’s holdings in the companies included about NZ$123 million in Motorola Solutions, NZ$48.5m in Booking.com, NZ$18m in Airbnb, and NZ$467,000 in Expedia.

The International Court of Justice at the United Nations had said in a landmark opinion in 2024 that Israeli settlements in the OPT were against international law, and while not legally binding, it was the first time the UN’s top court had delivered a position on the matter. Israel had declined to take part in hearings, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had at the time called the decision biased, and “false”.

The judicial review at the High Court in Auckland was brought by Maher Nazzal, Rawaa Elhanafy, and John Minto, representing the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa.

Minto described the decision as a hugely significant victory that would “send a shockwave” through New Zealand’s investment community.

The law which governs the Super Fund requires it to be managed in a way that avoids “prejudicing New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community”. However, the court found the Guardians’ current policies lacked clear benchmarks or “intelligible standards” to decide when a company’s conduct became unacceptable.

High Court judge Simon Mount’s decision ordered the NZ Super Fund to rewrite its investment policies.

Justice Mount noted that the Guardians had “reduced content” in their policy documents in 2022, removing specific references to the UN Global Compact, and direct links to human rights standards - a change which Minto described as “gobsmacking”.

The judge described the current rules as being framed in such general terms that they provided no practical benchmark for making or reviewing exclusion decisions.

He found the policies were “unreasonable” because they fell short of the basic standards Parliament would have expected when it created the fund.

Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa argued the fund should divest from the four companies due to their activities in the OPT, which are listed on a United Nations database of businesses linked to Israeli settlements.

The court heard the Guardians previously excluded five Israeli banks in 2021 because they financed construction of unlawful Israeli settlements in the OPT. The investment in those banks totalled $6.5m at the time.

In making that decision, the Guardians noted that the UN General Assembly had consistently reaffirmed that Israeli settlements were illegal, and the UN Human Rights Council had concluded that the construction of settlements caused or contributed to human rights breaches.

They noted that New Zealand had co-sponsored a UN Security Council resolution in 2016 that the settlements had no legal validity.

However, the Guardians had refused to divest from Motorola, Booking.com, Airbnb and Expedia, claiming they did not meet an “exclusion threshold”.

Justice Mount said that while the UN database was not a legal finding, it provided a “good faith basis for further enquiry”. He ruled it would not be “legally justifiable” for the Guardians to refuse to make decisions about the investments once they had fixed their unlawful policies.

The court granted a declaration that the Guardians’ sustainable investment framework and parts of its investment statement did not comply with the law.

The Guardians were now required to reformulate their policy documents to ensure they were clear, ascertainable, and capable of being applied consistently.

Minto said he expected that the Super Fund would have to divest its shares in the four companies after completing this process.

In a statement, Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation said it was considering its response to the decision.

Guardians CEO Jo Townsend said the organisation was strongly committed to operating as transparently as possible.

“We recognise that we are investing on behalf of all New Zealanders, and that gives people a legitimate interest in how we manage the Fund.

“We will thoroughly evaluate today’s decision and determine how best to respond to it.”

An independent review of the fund in 2024 by Willis Towers Watson gave the fund an “A” for its “sustainable” investment - which included ethical investments.