‘Climate Risk’ Is ‘Investment Risk,’ BlackRock CEO Tells Corporate America | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Ben Zeisloft.

    BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told investors on Wednesday that the asset management company views climate change as a risk to portfolio companies.

    BlackRock maintains an average 20% stake in every Fortune 500 company alongside rival asset management firms State Street and Vanguard. Fink claimed in his annual letter to investors that he desires to take a "long-term view of what will impact returns" and contended that firms should seriously account for the impact of climate change.

    "For years now, we have viewed climate risk as an investment risk. That's still the case," he wrote. "Anyone can see the impact of climate change in the natural disasters in California or Florida, in Pakistan, across Europe and Australia, and in many other places around the world. There's more flooding, more wildfires, and more intense storms. In fact, it's hard to find a part of our ecology, or our economy, that's not affected. Finance is not immune to these changes."

    BlackRock is a leading proponent of the environmental, social, and corporate governance movement, also known as ESG, which critics say mingles political and social causes, such as decreasing carbon emissions and achieving racial diversity in a manner that compromises or distracts from profitability. Fink insisted that BlackRock respects client choices with respect to climate investments, citing proxy voting rights the company recently extended to large investors.

    He added that the "transition to a low-carbon economy is top of mind for many of our clients" but claimed that "as minority shareholders, it's not our place to be telling companies what to do." BlackRock has nevertheless taken "voting action on climate issues" against dozens of portfolio companies, according to an investment stewardship report, while one small ESG firm recently gained three board seats at ExxonMobil with the aid of BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street.

    Fink added that BlackRock desires to "provide insights into how a changing climate and the transition may affect portfolios" over time. "These clients track the transition to lower carbon emissions just as they track any other driver of investment risk," he remarked. "They want our help to understand the likely future paths of carbon emissions, how government policy will impact these paths, and what that means in terms of investment risks and opportunities. It is not the role of an asset manager like BlackRock to engineer a particular outcome in the economy, and we don't know the ultimate path and timing of the transition."

    BlackRock's assets under management declined from $10.0 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2021 to $8.6 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the firm's most recent earnings report. The company, therefore, dismissed several hundred workers and paused most new hires.

    Skeptics of the ESG movement say the recent poor performance of ESG funds over the past year discredits the investment approach. Technology stocks, which score highly in ESG ratings due to the underlying companies' involvement in social issues, have fallen behind outsized profitability from energy stocks, which rank poorly due to worries regarding carbon emissions.

    Fink has meanwhile rebuked skepticism toward ESG voiced by some business leaders and conservative lawmakers. "Let's be clear, the narrative is ugly, the narrative is creating this huge polarization," he said at the World Economic Forum earlier this year. "We are doing everything we can to change the narrative."

poll#164

It has been far too many years since the Woke theology interlaced its canons within the fabric of the Indoctrination Realm, so it is nigh time to ask: Does this Representative Republic continue, as a functioning society of a self-governed people, by contending with the unusual, self absorbed dictates of the Woke, and their vast array of Victimhood scenarios?

  Yes, the Religion of Woke must continue; there are so many groups of underprivileged, underserved, a direct result of unrelenting Inequity; they deserve everything.

  No; the Woke fools must be toppled from their self-anointed pedestal; a functioning society of a good Constitutional people cannot withstand this level of "existential" favoritism as it exists now.

  I just observe; with this thoughtful observation: What will happen "when the Vikings are breeching our walls;" how do the Woke react?

845 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?

poll#178

Considering the current overwhelming obstacles inflicting stress upon America's working class: rampant inflation; energy insecurity; supply chain turmoil; banking failures; foreign policy disasters; government corruption; (DEI) Diversity Equity Inclusion narrative, with WOKE extremes practiced; Climate Change ideology; intractable crime wave in Leftist cities; wide open border by executive design; a permanently discredited Legacy Media; failed or failing education industry, just to name a few of the many: Who should Americans blame?

  Donald J. Trump

  Joseph R. Biden

  Leftist controlled Congress for the last 4 years.

  Bloated, incompetent bureaucracy weaponized and poorly managed

  The electorate, US, for putting these fools in elected office that utterly fail

277 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?