Owen Klinsky
Contributor
Asset management behemoth BlackRock wrote a letter to institutional investors Thursday announcing its exit from an emissions-focused investor group, according to the Financial Times (FT).
The firm, which manages over $10 trillion and has been a leader in environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing, has left the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) coalition — a United Nations–sponsored collection of financial services companies that have pledged to achieve net-zero portfolios by 2050 or sooner, the FT reported. The move comes less than two weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, who plans to embrace fossil fuels in his second term, takes office, and follows the exits of a slew of other corporations, including Goldman Sachs Group, Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (RELATED: UN Reportedly Moves To Unlock Tens Of Millions In Climate Funding For Country Run By Terrorists)
In the letter to investors, vice-chair Philipp Hildebrand wrote that the asset manager’s membership in NZAM had “caused confusion regarding BlackRock’s practices and subjected us to legal inquiries from various public officials,” according to the FT.
The firm began its ESG initiative in 2020, with CEO Larry Fink stating that “climate risk is investment risk” and that climate change would spark a “fundamental reallocation of capital.” However, the world’s largest asset manager exit has been backpedaling on its ESG efforts as of late, only supporting about 4% of the 493 environmental and social investment proposals shareholders put forward between the end of June 2023 and the end of June 2024, down from a rate of 47% in 2021.
BlackRock has also walked back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, editing their DEI language to be less racially oriented.
Fellow investment firm Vanguard left NZAM in 2022, while financial services firm State Street remains in the environmental coalition.
“The news of BlackRock’s departure from NZAM should be music to the ears of every American consumer,” Will Hild, executive director of conservative nonprofit Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “NZAM is an illegitimate cartel of asset managers pushing harmful and costly net zero policies across the entire economy. The activities of NZAM and its members raise prices on Americans everywhere from the gas pump to the grocery store.”
When reached for comment, BlackRock referred the DCNF to a report confirming their departure from NZAM.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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Trump said he would look hard at NZAM as an anticompetitive alliance. Everybody is getting out before Jan 20. 47 means business, and I think he has developed a mean streak the past 4 years of outrage after outrage.
In related news, NY court system just assigned a new judge to Letitia James civil fraud outrage. They see the appeals handwriting on the wall, lest it be remanded rather than dismissed.
Apparently they reversed the assignment and it’s back to the original judge,
Yeah but the guy who started NZAM is going to be the next idiot following Trudeau as Canadian P.M. this isn’t going to look good on his rez.
Mark Carney may head the Liberals after Trudeau, but the Liberals will become irrelevant in the next election. So not looking good actually helps with the upcoming transition to Poilievre.
I’m scratching my head as to how Carney can just be parachuted into the job of Canada’s Prime Minister, as all the media there are promoting.
After being nominated as Trudeau’s replacement leader of the Canadian Liberal party, doesn’t Carney then have to stand for an electoral district / seat / riding to be elected by voters to be their Member of Parliament (MP), and only then can he be elevated to Liberal leader, and then Prime Minister?
He doesn’t need to be elected to be the party leader but he does need to be elected to be Prime Minister since you can’t enter the house unless you are elected. If he runs and wins then some poor shmuck in a very safe seat will resign and Carney will be parachuted in. Problem is, I don’t think that the party has a very safe seat left.
I hope Canadians do the decent thing and make sure this scumbag does not get elected. The sort of person you hope has a house in LA.
My money is on Poilievre for Canadian PM.
I’d bet an apple on it.
🙂
That looks like a good bet.
By Undermedia – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
The shift simply indicates the direction the money is blowing. Formerly, all money went to utterly wasteful intermittent renewable energy projects. Now, that may change. Let’s hope.
That’s very bold
Not to say capital.
You know the saying don’t be the one left holding all the shares.
They all figure the taxpayer supported subsidy spigot will get turned off with the new Administration so the opportunity for grifting the “climate crisis” gig has run its course. So sad. F’n leeches.
It probably means they gave a new “scam” to milk in the works.
“have” not “gave”
I am beginning to dislike auto fill and word suggestions! 😩
Only beginning??
Can’t you opt out of it, John?
My own sense is that between DOGE and 47, new liberal milking scams will be few and far between. The LA fire disaster is the last nail in its DEI/ESG/climate change coffin.
Do you suppose the fire response will eject Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-CA from the 2028 presidential campaign? Which has likely already begun in the smoke-filled rooms of the Party’s shakers.
Which smoke filled rooms? There are lots of them in CA these days.
Newsom must be starting to feel the heat.
Like stepping in and cleaning up the mess in LA, rebuilding
the housing and being the new big landlord ?
I’ll try to find out more, but for now … The bottom line is we don’t know how much money these banks were lending to the alternative energy industry in the past. And we certainly don’t know how much alternative energy lending they will do in the future. Without those data, all we have is a series of bank press releases, and our conservative wishful thinking. Press releases that a careful read reveals do NOT sound like the banks are getting out of the alternative energy lending business.
Color me suspicious that this is bank virtue signaling to impress the new Trump majority. Rather than a significant change in lending policy.
DETAILS:
I read the article elsewhere yesterday and began wondering if these announcements were BS or a real change of lending policy. I read a few bank news releases and they sounded too woke to me. I began to think this might be far less than it seemed. Unfortunately, I had to stop my research when our old geezer friends all showed up early at our surprise birthday party, like they were coming for the 5pm early bird special at a local restaurant.
As a blog editor, I always think:
How do I know that is true?
I want data, not just predictions, or a popular narrative. I want to see actions, not just words.
My Editor Theory (Nobel Prize pending) is half of what we read is BS and the hard job is determining which half. There is a lot of lying and misleading in the news. And not all by leftists.
I am suspicious of many things:
(1) Banks actually getting out of the alternative energy lending business.
(2) Corporations that never supported Trump donating money to his inauguration, which seem like bribes to me
(3) Corporations announcing they have rejected DEI
(4) Trump talking like a dictator, threatening to take over the Panama Canal, etc. … and falsely claiming Panama overcharge US ships.
(5) Elon Musk acting as an America First CEO when he has HUGE financial conflicts of interest: SpaceX gets half its revenues from the US government. And the EV tax credits keep Ford and GM’s EV divisions barely alive, while Tesla EVs can survive without them.
They say Missouri is the “Show Me” State. I’ve never been to Missouri, but I’m a Show Me Guy.
“…all we have is a series of bank press releases, and our conservative wishful thinking.…”
_________________________________________________________________________
The Climate mob will like the USSR finally collapse from its own weight, but much like Yogi Berra’s observation, “It won’t be over until its over.” Breathless posts here at WUWT claiming cracks around the edges etc. is as Richard Green says, “Wishful thinking” Mark Hertsgaard and his “Covering Climate Now” organization and others of a similar nature aren’t going to go quietly into the night.
Indeed, but the fact that they are even giving it lip service is indicative of cracks in the armor. Of course the inaugural donations are bribes. They are hoping they can play nice and not be targets of wrath. The DEI/Woke mob is no longer an easy ally and the riders of convenience want off the train.
Scrambling for the exit, fleeing from the anti-trust prosecutions. Too late, Larry.
Besides the huge win, how about opening the files and tapes on what coercion was involved in that UN program partnership when Blackrock joined and defended its participation at the expense of fiduciary responsibilities of its clients.
Very nice Owen. It makes me nervous anytime business (especially big corporation) crawl into bed with government. It is even worse that NZAM is a United Nations sponsored outfit. I have no respect for Blackrock leadership and I don’t trust them.
Momentum continues to gather as financial institutions concede their job is to grow investors’ assets rather than subscribe to fashionable social and environmental movements. And when they examine the progress, or lack of it, by nations supposedly committed to reducing carbon emissions, they have all the more reasons to back away from attempts to save the planet. Canada provides them with a good example of fighting a losing battle. It committed to reducing its 2005 emissions levels by 40-45% by 2030. In actuality even with all the carbon pricing, they have fallen only 8.5%, or by only one-fifth of their goal. And guess what: the majority of citizens don’t care since they’re far more likely to be concerned with rising living costs and to elect a new government claiming to eliminate the carbon tax. So when big investment firms see this type of growing sentiment, they’re more than likely to abandon their exposure to companies that can’t deliver on their environmental promises.