BlackRock: Asset Manager or Political Operative?

Last month BlackRock announced plans to lay off 500 workers as the asset management giant and environmental, social and governance (ESG) acolyte contends with unprecedented 2022 losses. The losses are the worst in nominal terms for a 60/40 portfolio since the financial crisis of 2008-9 and the worst in real terms in a calendar year since the Great Depression in late 1929. According to the firm’s most recent earnings report, the company’s assets under management declined from $9.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2021 to $8.0 trillion in the third quarter of 2022 and delivered more than a twelve percent drop in net income.

But what precipitated such losses? Could it be old fashioned market volatility? Or was it the result of flawed strategic analysis, poor policy, or as BlackRock asserts, a problem intrinsic to its portfolio structure (60/40) that they now insist is outdated? Many in the industry, including icons like Goldman Sachs reject the assertion and acknowledge that at some point, every strategy bumps up against non-ideal market conditions through which firms must necessarily navigate.

Industry experts are breaking on both sides of the portfolio-structure argument, teeing up great debates in the months ahead. In the meantime, however, there is a compelling bit of information already known about what underpinned at least some of BlackRock’s historic losses. Rather than an outdated portfolio structure, perhaps a simple rejection of BlackRock’s evangelical approach to ESG contributed to the abysmal outcome in 2022.

Would you trust this man with your money?

BlackRock has regularly out-performed the broader market. Their moves are famously, or perhaps infamously, aped by others on Wall Street. As such BlackRock, for good or bad, influences the market in both tangible and intangible ways. Beginning in 2017, CEO Larry Fink began to increasingly focus on stakeholder capitalism and ESG. He famously said at the time that he intended to change the direction of corporate America. “At Blackrock we are forcing behaviors,” he said of the company’s ESG-scoring approach. He ordained himself the brand ambassador for both stakeholder capitalism and ESG, using BlackRock, a publicly traded company, as the podium from which to proselytize.

A creation of World Economic Forum (WEF) Founder, Klaus Schwab, "stakeholder capitalism" and the ESG construct were introduced through the WEF eco-system of non-profits, NGOs, financial partners and governments beginning in the early 1970’s (stakeholder capitalism) and in 2000, (ESG). Both have become central elements in the effort of asset management firms to re-orient capital flows. Controlling the capital markets gives the WEF-trained ideologues the ability to re-direct capital toward the social and political objectives important to them, even in defiance of the economic interest of their clients, many of which are the pensions funds of average American workers. "Climate change" is the pretense, "stakeholder capitalism" the philosophy, and ESG the unholy mechanism.

Because ESG has become a central focus of Fink in his role as an asset manager, many have pondered the degree to which his WEF board position may be affecting his objectivity. According to the WEF’s own description, the board “…serves as the guardian of the World Economic Forum’s mission and values.”

So what are the values Mr. Fink has agreed to uphold? The Forum's mission includes engaging leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Since part of the agenda of the WEF includes divesting of fossil fuel, for example, the concern of BlackRock clients becomes clear and quite legitimate. The overt capital market manipulation that he has championed as asset manager is seemingly based on objectives defined by the WEF rather than by the sole interest rule and fiduciary obligations codified in U.S. law.. 

Has asset manager Fink influenced the WEF through his leadership at BlackRock? Or, has his position as a WEF board member and guardian of WEF’s mission and values been used to influence the investment priorities and focus of BlackRock and the larger financial sector? It is a question for BlackRock clients, litigators, and regulators.

Regardless, it is clear that BlackRock has embraced the key tenets of stakeholder capitalism and ESG as a mechanism to re-direct capital away from industries with which Mr. Fink and WEF member-companies disagree, and toward the companies and industries they believe will drive some of the most significant political and societal change ever imagined:

None of this is news to BlackRock of course. They were alerted to client discontent in early 2022 when Arizona’s treasurer quietly pulled $543 million from the firm. Then in early August last year, the exodus began after 19 state attorneys general sent a joint letter to the company expressing concerns that its ESG agenda was impeding its ability to deliver a maximum return on investment for its shareholders—a legal obligation. They wrote: “Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field.”

So as BlackRock and industry experts ponder how recent historic losses can be avoided in the future, perhaps they should start by being schooled about the difference between an asset manager and a political operative.

The ESG Counter-Revolution Has Arrived

With this week’s announcement by the asset management giant Vanguard that it is exiting the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a sub-unit of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, it is clear that the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement is no longer in unfettered ascension. Although we're still far from being able to claim that U.S. investors are free of the talons of ESG, it is clear that the voice of investors and industry leaders who have been the target of these evangelists can no longer be ignored.

Created to repair the purported damage caused by capitalism, the ESG construct is in reality, far more sinister. The scheme was created as a mechanism to reorient capital flows toward political and social objectives that its progenitors from the World Economic Forum deem important. With help from its less attractive, though equally mischievous step-brother, the United Nations, they together seek to coerce political and social change that many investors do not want.

Vanguard’s announcement came about a week after Consumers’ Research and 13 state attorneys general asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to review Vanguard’s request to own energy company stocks, and sought to intervene in Vanguard's blanket authorization renewal request that was pending before the commission. Their brief pointed out that collectively, Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock hold the largest voting blocs for most of the S&P 500, and are the largest investors in public oil, gas, and coal companies, having a combined $300 billion fossil-fuel investment portfolio.

Fools and their money, etc.

But their membership in the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, created an intrinsic conflict of interest: support the decarbonization of the industries in which you invest, or do what is legally required and represent the best interest of their investors by maximizing returns. The decision was binary. For Vanguard, reason and legal obligation have won out over activism and social bullying.

Until now, asset-management firms have been happy to oblige the vision of these globalists because they believed they would benefit financially. Working in contravention of the sole interest rule and in defiance of legally mandated fiduciary obligations, the largest asset management firms have been attempting to force ESG adoption upon the boardrooms of publicly traded companies so as to transition them to the envisioned New World Order. Seeking power, wealth, and control, they have ordained themselves the arbiters of the acceptable, attempting to define which industries and companies should be permitted to participate in the capital markets and which should be relegated to a world they and their globalist masters unilaterally have decided should no longer exist.  

But now, with Vanguard’s withdrawal from the Net Zero Alliance and BlackRock’s recent market thrashing, asset management meddling may have reached its apex. Beginning earlier this year, investors and states attorneys general and treasurers, like those involved in the Consumers' Research filing, began to assert that investors’ interests were not being fiduciarily represented. These asset management giants have until now believed that their sheer economic heft would allow them to coerce companies and investors into using the ESG yardstick while diverting capital into companies that would help shape the new world they and the global activists envision. With a combined portfolio of $15 trillion under management, they unequivocally represent economic heft. But economic scale aside, market returns and the legal protections conveyed to investors and codified in U.S. law remain an unforgiving reminder of reality.

This week Vanguard was reminded by business leaders and investors of its core business and related legal obligations. Its very existence was threatened by its ESG promises to impede returns. Likewise, BlackRock pension fund clients have reminded CEO Larry Fink that his annual pronouncements of the value of stakeholder capitalism and ESG are falling flat. In the face of abysmal returns and market conditions created by poor economic and monetary policy, investors are demanding an abandonment of the ESG eco-system.

The states beg to differ, Mr. Fink.

BlackRock’s unprecedented $1.7 trillion losses in the first six months of the year has caused an exodus of pension fund clients worth nearly $4 billion. Arizona’s treasurer last February quietly pulled $543 million from BlackRock. Then in early August, 19 state attorneys general sent a joint letter to them expressing concerns that the company’s ESG agenda is impeding its ability to deliver a maximum return on investment for its shareholders. They wrote:

Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field. As a firm, BlackRock has committed to implementing an ESG engagement and voting strategy across all assets under management, and held over 2,300 company engagements on climate, the most of any category of engagement.

Then last month, Missouri Attorney General Scott Fitzpatrick divested $500 million in assets managed by BlackRock on behalf of the Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System. Louisiana’s treasurer, John Schroder told the Financial Times that he will divest $794 million. Utah and Arkansas likewise committed to pull $100 million and $125 million, respectively. Meanwhile, South Carolina’s state treasurer will remove $200 million of state retirement funds from BlackRock. And most recently, Florida announced it will pull $600 million of short-term investments, while freezing $1.43 billion of long-term securities, with an eye on reallocating the capital to other money managers by the start of 2023.

These state attorneys general and treasurers understand leverage. BlackRock assets under management dropped 16 percent year-on-year to $7.96 trillion, decreasing its net income by 17 percent. Meanwhile, shares in BlackRock are down roughly 30 percent this year ----underperforming the benchmark S&P 500 Index.

Vanguard has taken notice of BlackRock’s plight and correctly understands that the horizon looks stormy for those in the financial sector who choose to ignore their legal obligations to investors. Still, the ESG counter-revolution has only just begun. Whatever ESG ground that might be lost by private-sector asset management firms, one should assume that a doubling down by the Biden administration is already in motion. Whether through executive orders or regulatory mandates, ESG is the mechanism for governments and globalists to create the dystopic world they yearn for. Investors and states must maintain the pressure. 

Main Street v. Wall Street on 'ESG'

In recent weeks there have been giant strides in the effort to challenge the legality of the "Environmental, Social and Governance" (ESG) construct that has become a threatening obsession of the titans of Wall Street. Though ESG remains a unfamiliar acronym for most Americans, Main Street investors whose pension dollars are funding ESG investments are beginning to ask questions.

While constituting competing frameworks, reporting systems, and scoring systems for environmental and social reporting for companies, the ESG construct lacks any quantifiable or worthwhile measurements. Put plainly, it is an entirely subjective scheme, created and funded by political activists. Under the pretense of environmental protection and social diversity, these activists recognized that they had allies in the financial services and banking sectors who could be incentivized to do via the capital markets that which the activists knew they could never achieve using traditional market forces or democratic institutions. In short, voters would never agree to ruin their own economies, livelihoods and futures in the name of political ideology. To be successful, it necessarily needed to be stealthy and unchallenged.

Recognizing this reality, attorneys general Jeff Landry and Todd Rokita of Louisiana and Indiana issued a letter earlier this month warning their states’ pension boards that ESG investing is likely a violation of fiduciary duty and potentially opens their investment staff and investment advisers to liability if they continue allocating funds to ESG-promoting asset managers such as BlackRock.

Fink: BlackRock or black hat?

The Landry and Rokita letters follow another letter sent last month from them and seventeen other state AGs to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. That letter warns the asset management giant that BlackRock’s ESG investment policies appear to involve what they describe as, “rampant violations” of the sole interest rule, a well-established legal principle. The sole interest rule requires investment fiduciaries like BlackRock, to act to maximize financial returns, not to promote social or political objectives.

Yet, it is clear that BlackRock and industry counterparts are doing precisely that. They are attempting to use the ESG pretext of "protecting the environment" to re-orient trillions of dollars of their clients’ capital toward what are unquestionably their own political and social objectives. This effort is borne out in the companies in which they invest and the trends they curate and then fund. As is repeatedly touted in the literature of the most prolific ESG advocates, they believe that because their asset management partners, including BlackRock, manage such a substantial percentage of the total investment market, their ESG world view is above constraint of law, or beyond the reach of the institutions that have traditionally protected investors from dubious investment schemes.

ESG reporting and scoring is a scheme initially launched over two decades ago with the creation and funding of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) by the World Economic Forum (WEF), both of which advocate for political and social objectives. Out of the initial CDP funding effort has grown a network of non-profit entities, foundations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and, via the incentive of profit, the largest asset management firms and banks in the world. Together they constitute a validation-feedback loop. Left unconstrained, their political and social objectives will be paid for by investor capital, potentially in defiance of the best interest of their investors.

Marx: definitely a black hat.

So does this history square with Blackrock’s framing of their ESG policies? To answer, one need only start at the top, with BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink and his affiliation with the WEF, the originators of the Great Reset. The WEF, by mission, seeks to shape global, regional, and industry agendas, underpinned by so-called "stakeholder" theory, the mechanism needed to integrate communist principles into economic practice without getting sullied by the bloody history malignant socialism has left in its wake. According to the WEF:

The market mechanisms under capitalism do not provide incentives for preserving the environment. Firms are constantly threatened by market competition to cut costs and optimize profit. The environment thus falls prey to the compulsive market behaviour of the capitalist mode of production. Without the intervention of non-market entities such as the state, international organizations and social forces, capitalism as an economic system simply will not safeguard our planet.

With Fink as a Trustee Member of the WEF and an Agenda Contributor, one must assume Fink agrees with the objectives of the WEF. Is he an agenda-contributor who represents the views of BlackRock’s clients or, as it appears, is he ensuring that the Forum's agenda gets codified into and funded by the capital markets using BlackRock’s investors’ capital? Is it possible that Fink is doing the bidding of the stakeholder-focused Davoisie, in defiance of the sole interest of BlackRock’s own clients? With a recent $1.7 trillion loss in the first six months of this year in its ESG-indexed funds—the largest amount of money lost by an individual investment firm over that time period—one could certainly argue that he is doing just that. 

In his 2021 Letter to CEOs , for example, Fink regurgitates key WEF concepts. “We have long believed that our clients, as shareholders in your company, will benefit if you can create enduring, sustainable value for all of your stakeholders.” Apparently, shareholders just took second seat to the stakeholders. So much for sole interest. He continues, “In January of last year [2020], I wrote that climate risk is investment risk. I said then that as markets started to price climate risk into the value of securities, it would spark a fundamental reallocation of capital.” But it turns out that capital re-orientation is a stated goal of the WEF-funded CDP too:

 Through its engagement, advocacy and partnerships, CDP helps align corporate and governmental strategies with international goals, supports investors to shift capital to finance the low carbon transition; and changes expectations, ambitions and practices to pave the way to a new, restorative and sustainable society. CDP helps align corporate and governmental strategies with international goals, supports investors to shift capital to finance the low carbon transition; and changes expectations, ambitions and practices to pave the way to a new, restorative and sustainable society.

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The BlackRock/WEF cabal has also made its way into the highest reaches of government as well. Brian Deese serves as the Director of the National Economic Council (NEC). As a non- cabinet level position, it doesn’t require Senate confirmation. The confirmation process would have allowed an opportunity to challenge Deese’s obvious conflict of interest; a former Obama advisor and a passionate advocate of ESG, Deese became global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock in 2017 before joining the Biden administration.

Similarly, in June 2022, Tom Donilon, chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the firm’s global think tank, was appointed by secretary of state Anthony Blinken to co-chair the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. The board advises State on "strategic competition" with Beijing. Coincidently, last September BlackRock was permitted to open a mutual fund in China, making it the first American firm approved to sell financial products there.

With a future fraught with legal questions about ESG, perhaps investors should remind BlackRock of the difference between their sole interest and BlackRock's self-interest.

The Malign Genesis of ESG—Part 2

With BlackRock’s recent acknowledgement that it lost $1.7 trillion of investors’ capital in the first six months of 2022, the truth about the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) construct—the inherent cultural Marxism of the name really tells you everything you need to know—has been splayed open, revealing what could only be described as a contrived correlation between investment risk and environmental risk.

Rather than criteria intended to mitigate investment risk, as has been repeatedly asserted by BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, the ESG construct is actually an effort to develop a financial system that re-orients capital flows toward political and social ends which include government regulation, communal property rights, and social scoring. It is an organized effort to wrest control of private property from the hands of owners and transfer it to a global nomenklatura under the guise of "protecting" the environment and repairing the "damage" done by capitalism. 

As described here yesterday, these activists use layered non-profit organizations, foundations, and non-governmental organizations (NGO's), to undermine business culture, interfere with free markets, and circumvent democratic institutions. Using reliably self-interested and feckless financial and banking sector partners, companies like BlackRock and State Street Capital have abandoned their fiduciary obligations in exchange for higher management and consulting fees and greater leverage to direct capital toward investments that buttress their worldview.

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

As self-ascribed arbiters of permissible corporate and social values, these ostensibly independent financial sector experts act more like cultish evangelizers than disinterested asset managers. They seek to codify political views into boardrooms and across industries using other peoples’ capital—leveraging it to change behavior and directing it toward investments that align with their values. In  more enlightened decades such a scheme may have been considered coercion or collusion. But in the 2020s, financial leaders fancy it sophisticated enlightenment.

The first and most critical threshold these central planners established was to expand and conflate shareholders (investors) with stakeholders (non-owners, communities and entities outside the company). They began by expanding the understanding of shareholders to include these “stakeholders” that necessarily underpin stakeholder capitalism. It is a system, according to World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, in which private corporations are (imaginary) trustees of society and work for the benefit of everyone. Codifying this concept has been successful inasmuch as stakeholder capitalism has been integrated into the MBA programs of every major business school in the U.S. and around the world starting nearly three decades ago. Those students are the C-Suite leaders of today. They have become the reflexive mouthpieces of the ESG/Industrial Complex, promulgating a construct the genesis of which they are ignorant—and the impact of which they do not understand.

Once non-owners, communities, and supply chains are given standing through stakeholder capitalism, the follow-on concept of “natural capital” can more easily be integrated into the corporate psyche. As articulated in the Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) most recent report, “Accelerating the Rate of Change: 2021-2025,” these stakeholder advocates assert that the most pressing objective to ensure the culmination of decades of work is to codify the concept of natural capital as having parity with financial capital.

Under the ESG construct, "natural capital" refers to the entire planet's stocks of water, land, air, and renewable and non-renewable resources such as plant and animal species, forests, and minerals. Already protected by the current statutory and regulatory framework that includes the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Air Act—among the tens of thousands of pages of administrative rules and regulations enacted under the authority of these and other statutes—"natural capital" is intended to be the agent of change, not the point of the change. This newly sought parity represents a radical and game-changing extension of commonly understood financial capital. Successfully equating "natural capital" with financial capital would entrench stakeholder capitalism into corporate boardrooms and irreparably harm the country and economy.

"Parity" would provide the necessary portal through which these ESG-activist entities could fully gain control of corporations. After achieving complete control over business, they seek to dictate how a company monetizes its properties, the manufacturing processes from which it derives revenue, and to whom the company sells its product or service. If natural capital is given parity to financial capital, there is no longer any private property. Under the stakeholder-inspired understanding of capitalism whereby property can be controlled by everyone, it is owned by no one.

Bend over, comrade. It's for the common good.

At scale, this scheme will impact individual corporations and entire industry sectors, including American oil and gas. Abundant and inexpensive energy is central to a thriving capitalist economy. The U.S. oil and gas industry consistently delivers low-impact, inexpensive, and abundant energy. With a commitment to efficient, rapid, and environmentally superior extraction technology, the industry has improved the well-being of people and communities around the world. ESG unequivocally threatens its future. 

Because America is the only country in the world in which oil and gas mineral rights are privately owned, the U.S. oil and gas sector is not only a symbolic Marxist-socialist enemy but also a highly strategic target of the ESG/Industrial Complex. The significance of this fact cannot be overstated. By seeking to gain control of the energy sector through the ESG moral bludgeon, government regulation and divestment become not merely political initiatives in an ideological struggle but rather a critical battle for the survival of the entire industry, and by extension the entire U.S. domestic economy. It is therefore imperative that the response to reject and unwind the ESG movement be led by those from the oil and gas industry, joined by the agricultural, mining and construction sectors, all of whom have foreknowledge about the comping economic and political impact of ESG and the requisite resources and expertise to exploit its weaknesses and mount an effective counterattack.

According to the non-profit CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, the ESG/Great Reset cabal wants "governments to introduce ambitious legislation that drives market changes. We create space for this by running a reporting mechanism that incentivizes good behavior, catalyzes the creation of new standards and prepares the market for the change to come.” In case you're wondering on which side they're on, here's their mission statement:

CDP runs the global environmental disclosure system. Each year CDP supports thousands of companies, cities, states and regions to measure and manage their risks and opportunities on climate change, water security and deforestation. We do so at the request of their investors, purchasers and city stakeholders. Over the last two decades we have created a system that has resulted in unparalleled engagement on environmental issues worldwide.

In sum, ESG is a front in an ideological war with real political, economic, and social consequences. It is a front in a non-kinetic war, which instead of guns, bombs and missiles employs the weapon of ESG to control speech, dictate how one can use his property, re-direct capital flows, and expand the role of government. Their objective is to control every aspect of the economy and business and to reorder national governments and human society.

The generals on their side don’t come from the military. Rather, they come from government, central banks, and the financial sectors. Meanwhile, the domestic oil and gas industry must defend the side of liberty in all its forms. It should not merely rebuff these attackers and render the ESG/Industrial Complex impotent, It must continue to strive for excellence in its development and delivery of energy. Meanwhile, the American people must stand shoulder to shoulder with them and help lay the foundation on which future generations will flourish.

Another Bad Day at Black Rock

Imagine if you had billions of dollars of other peoples’ money at your disposal to invest and instead of investing it prudently to provide the maximum safest returns you can find, you decide to blow it to advance your own “environmental, social and governance”(ESG) objectives. Imagine that this virtue-signaling power trip at the expense of those to whom you owe a high degree of care, cost clients $1.7 trillion dollars in over a six-month period. Well, you don’t actually have to consider this a hypothetical, that is the story of BlackRock as I noted last month.

The question in my mind for the two years I have been warning about the loss to beneficiaries of such mismanagement is whether there will be any consequences for such conduct, and it looks as though there will be. Big time.

Among the more traditional ways of recouping such losses as pensioner lawsuits against investment managers of pension funds (and a lot of the money BlackRock handles for others is pension fund money), it looks like state boycotts and antitrust lawsuits may also be in the making. In January Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick asked the state’s comptroller to place BlackRock “at the top of the list of financial companies that boycott the Texas oil and gas industry.” Doing so under Texas senate Bill 13 would deprive companies like Blackrock from substantial accounts. The state could no longer contract with or invest in any companies so listed.

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Just yesterday, BlackRock Chairman and CEO, Larry Fink, issued his annual 2022 letter to CEOs indicating that BlackRock’s goal is to transition to a “net zero” world, including decarbonizing the energy sector. Needless to say, it is highly inconsistent to claim support for Texas’ oil and gas energy industry while leading a “net zero” policy effort that will destroy the oil and gas industry and destabilize the economy worldwide.

According to SB 13, a company is considered to be boycotting an energy company if it limits relations with an entity involved in the fossil fuel-based energy sector if the entity “does not commit or pledge to meet environmental standards beyond applicable federal and state law[.]” Committing to a “net zero” carbon strategy is beyond applicable environmental standards in federal and state law. Therefore, BlackRock is boycotting energy companies by basing investment decisions on whether a company pledges to meet BlackRock’s “net zero” goals.

Recently the state of West Virginia announced it would no longer do business with companies that boycott the fossil fuel industry—which includes BlackRock. The ban will “cost the firms $18 billion a year” according to West Virginia’s treasury office. That business loss is now potentially in the trillion-dollar range as 19 state attorneys general point to Fink’s record and assert the company he heads is “an explicit leader in the such to ‘retire fossil fuels’”. The letter to BlackRock Chairman Fink reads like a legal pleading with very extensive factual and legal citations. It begins:

Based on the facts currently available to us, BlackRock appears to use the hard-earned money of our states’ citizens to circumvent the best possible return on investment, as well as their vote. BlackRock’s past public commitments indicate that it has used citizens’ assets to pressure companies to comply with international agreements such as the Paris Agreement that force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation, and weaken the national security of the United States. These agreements have never been ratified by the United States Senate. The Senators elected by the citizens of this country determine which international agreements have the force of law, not BlackRock. We have several additional concerns that fall under our jurisdictional authority as attorneys general.

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Those "additional concerns" should also be concerning to BlackRock. On the question of “neutrality” on energy, the AGs put paid to the company's claim, noting its many actions to wipe out the fossil fuel industry. “Rather than being a spectator betting on the game, BlackRock appears to have put on a quarterback jersey and actively taken the field. It mocks the company’s claim that it wishes to “dialogue” on energy issues, and accuses Blackrock of violating its fiduciary duty as the investment manager for state pension funds, as well as the company's poor energy projection record and its priorities. “Given these facts, it strains credulity to believe that a sole focus on financial returns would lead an asset manager to manage all assets for the achievement of net zero by 2050 and make climate issues the number one portfolio company engagement factor.”

More than arguing a breach of fiduciary obligations, the signers indicate the company's actions violate federal antitrust law.

 BlackRock’s actions appear to intentionally restrain and harm the competitiveness of the energy markets. Disturbingly, a survey last year from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas asked: “Which of the following is the primary reason that publicly traded oil producers are restraining growth despite high oil prices?” Sixty percent of respondents referenced a form of “investor pressure.” These antitrust concerns are especially acute because BlackRock and other asset managers affirmatively tout their market dominance. BlackRock is the world’s largest investment management company, with $10 trillion in assets, “more than the gross domestic product of every country in the world, except for the US and China.

The letter seeks a response by the 22nd of this month. The tenor of this well-documented letter and its extensive citations of fact and law lead me to believe, BlackRock will be forced to defend multiple lawsuits unless it takes significant steps to abandon both its ESG investment strategies and its extensive activities to force net-zero emissions at the expense of those whose money they manage.

Coming next week: The Genesis of ESG, by Joan Sammon.