Almost from the moment of our first landmark Pension Politics report, BlackRock began retreating from the leading proponent of putting left-wing politics over investment returns to the middle of the pack to, perhaps, more skeptical of ESG than the average fund manager.
This headline caught our attention:
In the 12 months to the end of June, BlackRock supported just 20 of the 493 environmental and social proposals put forward by shareholders at annual meetings, or about 4 per cent of the total, according to its annual investment stewardship report.
That compares with a high of 47 per cent in 2021. By last year the figure had fallen to 7 per cent.
The decline in support comes as companies’ efforts to address climate change and inequality — issues that were once bundled together with governance under the ESG umbrella — have become politically fraught.
We’ll keep banging the drum.