Texas will withdraw approximately $8.5 billion in assets from BlackRock due to its ESG practices, the largest such divestment following many Republican states’ moves to cut connections with businesses that conservatives perceive as favoring leftist aims.
Aaron Kinsey, chairman of the Texas State Board of Education, announced the action on Tuesday. On the same day, a letter was issued to BlackRock, notifying the world’s largest money manager. The divestiture was made to comply with the state’s anti-environmental, social, and governance statute, which forbids state participation in corporations such as BlackRock, which Republicans claim boycott energy industries.
“BlackRock’s dominant and persistent leadership in the ESG movement immeasurably damages our state’s oil and gas economy and the very companies that generate revenues for our [Permanent School Fund],” Kinsey said in a press release. “Texas and the PSF have worked hard to grow this fund to build Texas’s schools.”
“BlackRock’s destructive approach towards the energy companies that this state and our world depend on is incompatible with our fiduciary duty to Texans,” he went on to say.
BlackRock, on the other hand, says it is helping millions of Texans and has emphasized its investment in the state.
“On behalf of our clients, we’ve invested more than $300 billion in Texas-based companies, infrastructure, and municipalities, including $125 billion invested in the energy sector, including $550 million [in] a joint venture with Occidental,” a spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “We recently hosted an energy summit in Houston designed to explore how to strengthen Texas’ power grid.”
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELESG is a financial concept that emphasizes driving social change through investing and divestment. It is a corporate model that considers more than just profit maximization when making financial decisions, such as how an investment may impact fossil fuel emissions. ESG is an evil concept in that it forces companies to act in ways that are not natural to their business, all to push for far-left social justice nonsense.
A lot of people don’t know that radical leftist governors like California’s Gavin Newsom have threatened to withhold their large school pension funds from Blackrock if they don’t push the ESG agenda.
Blackrock should have a fiduciary relationship with their clients and not treat them like they are subordinates of Blackrock.
In recent years, Republicans have reacted negatively to ESG and other “woke” corporate business practices. BlackRock, in particular, has emerged as a key target, with many Republican state attorneys general and treasurers pursuing the mammoth company.
“No matter whether it’s called ‘stakeholder capitalism’ or ‘transition investing,’ if the intent of an asset manager is to end America’s oil and gas industry, then they can expect continued pushback from conscientious public officials looking out for their constituents,” said Derek Kreifels, president and chief executive officer of the State Financial Foundation, in a press release.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, has emerged as a key figure in the ESG movement. For example, in 2020, Fink’s highly anticipated annual letter focused on climate change, stating that it was becoming a “defining factor” in BlackRock’s evaluation of companies.
BlackRock claims that it just wants companies to submit disclosures on relevant concerns affecting their businesses so that investors may assess risks such as climate change and make sound financial decisions.
Blackrock is full of crap. It is a woke social justice movement they are pushing, and they have no right to do so. The reason they never cared about pushback is because, when you think about it, Blackrock and Vanguard own most of the stock in most companies. And so, for example, if a car dealership wants to fight back against the ESG standards imposed by Black Rock, Blackrock will drop that dealership because they own six others.
The Texas statute in question, which led to Tuesday’s divestiture declaration, was approved in 2021 with a similar bill aimed at the weapons industry. Proponents believe that it protects the state’s energy industry, while others claim it has hindered economic development in the Lone Star State.
The Texas Association of Business and Chamber of Commerce Foundation recently conducted a study that found that the rules will cause hundreds of millions of dollars in missed economic activity over time.
It’s not the first time that states run by Republicans have used divestment to go after BlackRock.
Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Utah, and other states have either taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of BlackRock and Fink or said they are going to do so.
In 2022, Florida’s chief financial officer said that the state would be pulling about $2 billion out of BlackRock. Before Texas’s news on Tuesday, this was the biggest state withdrawal from BlackRock.
This is the way to fight back. What we need is a conservative Blackrock, a place where investors who are fed up with ESG and all the goofiness that comes along with it can invest.
#texasdivestment #blackrock #esg
