Free Enterprise Project Calls BlackRock’s ESG Push Highly Hypocritical As The Asset Manager Pushes Risky Chinese Investments Already Under Fire From The U.S. Senate
Washington, D.C. – The BlackRock annual shareholder meeting today brought to a head pressing issues that the Free Enterprise Project (FEP) has been highlighting for months: BlackRock continues to support liberal shareholder initiatives while investing heavily in Chinese companies that lack basic stewardship and regulatory oversight.
“BlackRock CEO Larry Fink consistently brags about his commitment to pushing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) causes as part of a new ‘stakeholder’ capitalism. Yet when I asked him about the two-faced nature of these hollow boasts against the backdrop of BlackRock’s promotion of Chinese investments that lack any ESG stewardship, he couldn’t answer the question,” said Justin Danhof, Esq., General Counsel and FEP Director at the National Center for Public Policy Research. “Today Fink showed extreme corporate cowardice.”
Today’s BlackRock meeting comes one day after the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan bill, by unanimous consent, that would force Chinese companies to comply with new stringent standards or be expelled from U.S. equity markets. Specifically, they must disclose whether they are owned or controlled by a foreign government. They would also have to comply with audits from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) for three years in a row.
The Senate’s action is exactly in line with a coalition letter, spearheaded by the Committee on the Present Danger: China, of which Danhof was a signatory.
“Fink may not care if Chinese companies comply with basic accounting standards required of American-based corporations, but the U.S. Senate sure does, and I am guessing that many BlackRock shareholders do as well. If Fink won’t respond to our basic questions, perhaps he should be called to answer before Congress.”
At this morning’s meeting, Danhof submitted the following question:
Mr. Fink, you have indicated that BlackRock will support a number of left-leaning environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives and even vote against board members of American companies that don’t comply with your ESG dictates. For companies to comply with your edicts would add enormous extra-regulatory costs amidst the backdrop of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. At the same time, you simultaneously insist on investing BlackRock’s funds and those of others in Communist China, which has a deplorable record with respect to environmental stewardship, justice and accountable governance. These Chinese investments also lack the basic auditing safeguards required of U.S. companies.
How do you square punishing American companies with increased ESG costs with BlackRock’s Chinese investments?
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