British activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners is aiming its guns at BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, and its CEO Larry Fink, criticising the firm for its ‘hypocrisy’ over its ESG and sustainability practices while drawing attention to its failure to exercise proper ESG stewardship. The asset manager’s behaviour risks becoming “an obstructive force” to the effective functioning of capitalism, it said, calling for Fink to step down.
In a 17-page letter to Fink and BlackRock’s board, Bluebell’s co-chief investment officers Giuseppe Bivona and Marco Taricco argued that BlackRock has changed its positions multiple times on investing in thermal coal production while failing to live up to its stated sustainability commitments. “The contradictions and apparent hypocrisy of BlackRock’s actions have policitized the ESG debate,” Bluebell wrote. “The reputational damage of being dragged into this politically charged debate, in our view, is very significant because it calls into question the independency of BlackRock as an asset manager.”
Bluebell specifically urges BlackRock’s board to split the role of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and to appoint a new CEO that would replace Larry Fink. “This is with the objective for the de-personalisation of the ESG strategy from the opinions of the current BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO, who has managed to alienate the public opinion of twenty-three US states in representation of approximately 150 million people,” it said.
Reputational and greenwashing risk
Bluebell holds approximately 0.01 percent of BlackRock, which has a market value of of 107 billion dollars. “As shareholder in BlackRock, we are increasingly concerned about the reputational risk (including greenwashing risk) to which you have unreasonably exposed the Company potentially fuelling a gap between the ‘talk’ and the ‘walk’ on ESG investing; and the backlash caused by BlackRock’s ESG strategy which has alienated clients and attracted an undesired level of negative publicity,” the letter said.
Bluebell noted that BlackRock has failed to support its position on environmental shareholder resolutions at mining group Glencore, Belgian chemicals group Solvay and at Italy defence firm Leonardo. Solvay continues to draw criticism over its annual discharge from its soda-ash factory in Rosignano, Italy, into the Mediterranean Sea, of over 250,000 tons of suspended solids containing large amount of heavy metals. Bluebell had lobbied for stopping these emissions, a plan that was not supported by BlackRock. In September however, Bluebell had convinced Solvay’s management to address these emissions.
“A clear by-product of our engagement was the evidence of how little Solvay’s largest shareholders (BlackRock being the largest and most vocal on environmental sustainability) had achieved regarding Solvay’s environmental agenda, relative to the success accomplished by Solvay’s smallest shareholder (Bluebell Capital being smallest). We cannot see how these facts reconcile with the rhetoric contained in your ‘Dear CEOs’ and ‘Dear Clients’ annual letters,” the activist investor wrote to Fink.
“Obstructive force”
“If BlackRock fails to properly exercise its power on corporate governance - or worse, starts to exercise the power in the pursuit of a political agenda (i.e., climate and energy policies) - then BlackRock becomes an obstructive force to the effectiveness of corporations and more broadly to the effective functioning of capitalism,” Bluebell told Fink.
In its response, BlackRock said that Bluebell “in the past 18 months has waged a number of campaigns to promote their climate and governance agenda. BlackRock Investment Stewardship did not support their campaigns as we did not consider them to be in the best economic interest of our clients.”