BlackRock Inc. said on Tuesday it was teaming up with a third proxy advisory firm to offer broader investment advice to clients, as critics say the asset manager is seeking to defy accusations that it is more committed to ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles than its fiduciary responsibilities warrant.
In a release obtained by Fox News Digital on Monday, BlackRock executives said the firm remains focused on offering clients options to support the expansion of their investment preferences through its voting choice program.
“We continue to innovate to offer more options to clients who want to take a more direct role in the proxy voting process,” Jude Abdel-Majeed, global head of BlackRock Investment Stewardship, said in a press release.
“We are pleased to add a third proxy advisor to our platform and give more clients the option to customize their voting guidelines to reflect their individual goals and objectives.”
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In this regard, BlackRock will welcome Delaware County, Pennsylvania-based ratings firm Egan Jones as its third proxy advisory firm starting in July. Egan Jones’ founder, Sean Egan, was previously ranked by Fortune magazine as the No. 1 predictor of the 2008 financial crisis.
“With the addition of the two Egan Jones guidelines, Voting Choice now offers targeted clients additional choice with up to 16 different voting guidelines across the three proxy advisory services and BlackRock’s benchmark policy,” the statement said.
“The vast majority of BlackRock’s equity clients continue to entrust BlackRock’s investment management team with the important responsibility to comply with BlackRock’s fiduciary duties and to vote in accordance with BlackRock’s benchmark policies.”
BlackRock CEO calls ESG political debate ’embarrassing’, says it’s being exploited by the far left and right
The BlackRock-Egan Jones partnership appears to be an attempt to tamp down criticism about the politicization of investing, but some conservatives are unconvinced.
A leading public policy expert who has long opposed the politicization of the financial services sector told Fox News Digital that BlackRock is not establishing any kind of apolitical fiduciary stance by bringing on Egan-Jones as an adviser.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, said BlackRock’s move was long overdue, at best.
“[CEO] “Larry Fink may claim that ESG is ‘weaponized by the left and the right,'” he said, referring to a July 2023 interview with Fink on Fox Business. “But he’s missing the reality: ordinary Americans know ESG is a scam.”
In an interview, Fink said BlackRock is attracting more new investors than ever before in its history, he told Fox Business host Liz Claman, and pushed back against criticism of its ESG focus by saying the company remains a fiduciary “servicing our clients.”
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“Business is going well and our market forecasts are accurate,” Fink said.
BlackRock executives also said they would leave it to shareholders to vote on whether to adopt ESG policies.
In his 2023 chairman’s letter to investors, Fink addressed some of Roberts’ general criticism, writing, “Many people have opinions about how client funds should be managed. But the funds don’t belong to them. They don’t belong to us. The funds belong to our clients, and our responsibility and obligation is to our clients.”
In comments to Fox News Digital, Roberts said many states are still trying to “keep politics out of the boardrooms of corporate America.”
“BlackRock’s move to expand ‘voting choice’ – trumpeted as a ‘commitment to giving clients choice’ – is too little, too late,” he said, noting that the rise of the right in France and the European Parliament shows people are “tired of being pawns in the global elite’s battle against common sense.”
Prior to Egan-Jones’ joining, BlackRock said it had $600 billion in institutional investment assets under management entrusted to its Voting Choice program.
Fox News Digital has reached out to other financial services experts and lawmakers for comment.
