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Woke governance that has sent profits spiraling at companies like Anheuser-Busch and Target often begins with lefty investment firms pressuring them to push products their way, an ex-top Anheuser-Busch exec said.

During an appearance on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Anson Frericks said behind-the-scenes politicking from firms like New York-based BlackRock and Pennsylvania-based Vanguard spur many of the controversial decisions sparking nationwide boycotts from longtime more conservative customers — such as the ill-fated Bud Light promotion with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney

He said BlackRock, Vanguard, and another firm, State Street, manage about $20 trillion in capital and use their clout to promote agenda politics being pushed on them by progressive lawmakers overseeing government pension funds that the companies profit from.

@TexasLindsay_
BlackRock CEO: “At BlackRock we are forcing behaviors… you have to force behaviors.”

Aveteran American Airlines pilot who is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force in his 20th year as an F-16 instructor at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, Texas, has filed a class action lawsuit against American Airlines, claiming the carrier invested millions of dollars of employees’ retirement savings in funds that “pursue leftist political agendas”.

Bryan P. Spence is one of approximately 100,000 members of the American Airlines pension plan – one of the largest in the United States with around $26 billion assets, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Dallas last week.

Over the last six years, Spence says he has suffered financial harm after investing in funds made available through the American Airlines pension plan. Spence says this is a result of the airline choosing funds that are designed to meet ESG goals.

Nowadays, the majority of big businesses have a formal ESG policy which is designed to guide the company’s decision-making on environmental, social, and governance matters.

In his lawsuit, Spence highlights examples of ESG policy, including sustainability efforts, LGBTQ+ interests and racial and gender diversity, as well as executive pay and diversity in leadership.

The problem, however, is that Spence claims ESG investments underperform financially compared to non-ESG investments and that they “engage in shareholder activism to achieve ESG policy agendas rather than maximize the risk-adjusted financial returns for Plan participants”.

While some of AA’s investment funds are specifically labelled as ESG-compliant, Spence alleges that many other funds target ESG goals without being labeled as such.

Spence even goes so far as to say that “many American workers don’t realize that their hard-earned money is being used against them.”

“Firms whose job is to deliver investment returns are instead weaponizing retirement funds, public pensions and other investments in pursuit of nakedly ideological goals,” the complaint continues.

“It is perhaps the most severe breach of the fiduciary standard in American history.”

Lawyers acting on behalf of Spence argue that American Airlines has a duty under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to ensure that all funds managed under its 401(k) plan deliver the best financial results for its members meaning that underperforming ESG investments should be dumped.

“The unlawful decision to pursue unrelated policy goals over the financial health of the Plan is not only flatly inconsistent with Defendants’ fiduciary responsibilities, it jeopardizes the retirement security of hundreds of thousands of American Airlines employees,” the complaint continues.

“Plaintiff brings this lawsuit to remedy Defendants’ breaches of fiduciary duties and for injunctive relief to prevent further violations and mismanagement of the Plan.”

If allowed to proceed to trial, Spence will call on the court to rule that American Airlines has breached its fiduciary duties under federal pension law and force the carrier to top up the plan to make up for losses from ESG funds.

The case was filed in Texas Northern District Court under case number: 4:2023cv00552

What are the steps to make this happen? Who makes the decision for Blackrock to manage pension money, and how can we target those people with the message that they must stop?

(former AB exec Anson Frericks) said BlackRock, Vanguard, and another firm, State Street, manage about $20 trillion in capital and use their clout to promote agenda politics being pushed on them by progressive lawmakers overseeing government pension funds that the companies profit from.

One of the firms manages California’s pension fund — the largest in the country — and California politicians can have a big say in the corporate governance and politicking of the firms they invest so heavily in, he added.

“In California, for example, they recently have mandated those large pension funds that they divest from things like fossil fuels and oil and gas, and then when Bill de Blasio, [former] mayor of New York, was there, he did the same thing,” he said.

“But they also tell BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard if they’re going to manage their money, they have to commit to things like ESG — diversity, equity, inclusion — and adopt firm-wide commitments that they therefore then force onto all the major companies in corporate America.”

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

zzyzzx says

BlackRock is a publickly traded company. Ticker BLK.
Someone, probably several people, need to buy a share (~$680/share right now), and make sure that at every shareholder vote there is a vote on firing Fink, and ban ESG requirements on loans other investments. And probably speak up at shareholder meetings.

I like this idea!

Even one shareholder speaking out at the meeting would be a big win.

Patrick says

What's "sex-sex couples"?

https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1671262303319392259

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says that he's dropping the term "ESG" because leaders like Ron DeSantis have killed the brand

Larry Fink (yes, his real name is Fink) is the CEO of BlackRock investing and he has even recently admitted that his ESG plot is designed to force corporations to adopt woke leftist policies against their will.

He's changing the ESG branding because, according to him, it's been made political:

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he's no longer using the term "ESG" (environment, social and governance) because it is being politically "weaponized" and he's "ashamed" to be part of the debate on the issue.

Yes, the dude who wants to force companies to follow the woke cult or suffer thinks that the opposition to ESG has been weaponized.

Woke is walking.

Larry Fink, CEO of investing giant BlackRock, said he’ll no longer be using the buzzphrase “ESG,” which stands for environmental, social, and governmental factors when evaluating companies to invest in. ESG investing gained some popularity in recent years as a set of non-financial metrics to help guide conscientious investors toward ethical companies and away from malfeasant ones.

Supporters argue that ESG investing, while fostering a clear conscience, also generates superior returns.

Yet like any do-gooder effort these days, ESG investing also produced a politicized backlash, mostly from conservatives protesting liberal overreach, or the “woke mind virus,” as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likes to say. Fink says the term and the concept of ESG have been “totally weaponized” and “misused by the far left and the far right.” Fink has been a leading proponent of ESG investing, so his about-face may mark the beginning of the end of this socially conscious trend.

I’m shedding no tears. ESG investing may have been worth a shot, but it has turned out to be counterproductive, outdated, and ineffective. For one thing, research suggests ESG investing might produce higher short-term returns only because the trendiness of it leads to more short-term demand for certain ESGish tickers. Over the long term, ESG returns are nothing special.

Markets should also do what markets are good at, which is maximizing profits and efficiency. Other institutions should regulate pollution rules, police corporate governance, enforce the rights of all minority groups, and pursue the other goals of ESG investing. There’s never a bright line delineating where the market ends and government begins, and the ESG movement has been a kind of trial-and-error effort to move those lines a little bit, which is fine. But the experiment failed. Here is how each leg of ESG investing flopped.

Environmental:

The biggest push along this axis has been the movement to disinvest in fossil fuel companies. Be careful what you ask for. Guess who benefits when free-market economies start to move away from oil and natural gas: Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other unsavory oil-producing nations that don’t care about ESG values. This played out in stark fashion last year when Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine and energy prices soared, producing a windfall for Russia to use to finance its war. Here in the United States, enviro-president Joe Biden faced a huge political problem as gasoline prices skyrocketed to $5 per gallon. The ultimate irony was Biden, a green-energy acolyte, begged US drillers to produce more oil. Everybody forgot that most of the US and world economies still run on fossil fuels.

The ESG mindset on energy is binary: Renewables are good and fossil fuels are bad — get rid of fossil fuels as fast as possible. This is completely disconnected from what’s happening in the world and even from the best-case scenario for green-energy adoption. The world will need a lot of oil and natural gas for decades, and gas is even a crucial “base load” fuel that will allow the faster adoption of renewables. Pressure to disinvest in companies that produce vital commodities we depend on today is foolish. The better approach is a steady transition from one to the other without jumping so fast you cause self-defeating shortages.

....

Social:

Who sets the rules for what is socially acceptable behavior at publicly owned companies? This is obviously a minefield for CEOs, with the recent Bud Light fiasco showing that outreach to one group can enrage other subsets of customers. ESG investors want to favor companies demonstrating the most tolerance toward the widest group of people, which is laudable. Maybe just do not do it through your portfolio?

...

Governance:

Aren’t investors supposed to take account of corporate governance as a matter of course, and not as some special side venture? Isn’t that why we have a whole elaborate set of reporting requirements governed by the Securities and Exchange Commission? What more do you need? Again, this is a bit of a guise meant to assure favored companies do the right thing, whatever the right thing is. If you doubt the effectiveness of plain-old corporate governance, watch what happens to a company’s stock when it discloses it has received a Wells Notice or files an 8-K report providing notice of some accounting irregularity.

...

Blackrock and/or Vanguard are among the three largest institutional investors for 505 out of 505 of the S&P 500. (100%)
One or the other is the single largest institutional investor in 422 of these. (84%)