Mediaboss Marketing

BlackRocks Salim Ramji tries to deflect criticism of his firms progressive political agenda (Letters, May 27). He claims that BlackRock casts proxy votes based only on long-term interests of clients. It needs to define long term, by which it means the benefits of mitigating climate change by leaving fossil fuels in the ground. If a client is a retiree, is long term sooner than death? Is BlackRocks $10 trillion in assets enough to engineer a self-fulfilling prophecy of a premature leap to a carbon-free but energy-deficient future?

Mr. Ramji claims that BlackRock merely wants more disclosure. But detailed disclosures about ESG policies are about as innocuous as progressives disclosing home addresses of Supreme Court justices. He adds that index-fund managers faithfully track an index and therefore cannot divert assets from specific industries. But when BlackRock pressures CEOs of oil companies in the index to spend less on oil exploration, production and distribution, the index return is affected. If the short-term effect of lower-carbon guidance is a lower index return, clients suffer an opportunity costbut no one is the wiser because BlackRock faithfully tracks and matches the return of the index.

See more here:
BlackRock Gives Up Neither Power Nor Progressivism - The Wall Street Journal