First Florida – now North Carolina is canceling ESG activism. The Tar Heel State’s State Treasurer, Dale Folwell, who manages the ninth-largest public pension system in the country at $111.4 billion, is Making moves to remove about $2 billion in assets from BlackRock’s stewardship IF BlackRock CEO Larry Fink does not resign.
Folwell says BlackRock has “been at the forefront of using its market power to coerce the world’s companies to transition to carbon ‘net-zero’ by 2050.” But as we noted last week, pension fund managers have a fiduciary responsibility to get the highest return for pensioners. Black Rock has divested from oil and gas companies, like Exxon, which have had the highest returns of major industries this past year.
As we noted last week, Larry Fink of BlackRock has always claimed that his ESG investing yields higher returns, even though this year the returns are way down. We’d love to see other State Treasurers follow Florida and North Carolina’s lead on this one.