On Thursday, Breitbart reported the following:
Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee slammed BlackRock for moving “away from its fiduciary duty in general as an asset manager” and into “political activism.”
“At the beginning of this year, I led in the national divestment effort to remove any exposure we had with BlackRock,” Yee said. She noted that her office “divested more than $543 million from BlackRock money market funds and reduced our direct exposure to BlackRock by 97% this year.”
On Thursday, Red State reported the following:
The investment company known as BlackRock has an agenda that is far from beneficial on many fronts, including as it adheres to the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investment standards — standards which focus on adherence to left-leaning ideologies instead of profitability and good business practices.
In sticking to ESG practices, BlackRock has endangered the livelihoods of Texans and pension plans by boycotting industries that left-leaning people typically resist like oil and coal, throwing investment capital instead at companies with “green initiatives.”
As RedState previously covered back in June, BlackRock controls more assets than any other investment management firm on Wall Street with around $10 trillion under management. BlackRock’s Investment Institute Chairman Thomas E. Donilon has had closed-door meetings with the Biden administration on multiple occasions, according to White House logs, and his ties to the Biden administration go even deeper, including familial ties between Thomas and his brother Mike Donilon, Biden’s chief strategist during the 2020 campaign.
According to Fox Business, Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), Chairman of the Committee on State Affairs, issued a statement saying that BlackRock, as well as other investment firms such as Vanguard and State Street, have been issued summons to appear before Texas lawmakers on December 15:
“The Committee needs these documents to uncover the extent to which these firms have been playing politics using Texans’ hard-earned money. Next week we will hold a hearing where each firm will appear and give account to the people of Texas,” Texas Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the chairman of the Committee on State Affairs, told FOX Business in a statement. “While each firm has produced documents, some have provided more than others. BlackRock in particular has refused to provide documents it considers internal or confidential.”
“Accordingly, we have issued a subpoena to BlackRock for the production of additional documents the committee needs to complete its work,” Hughes continued. “We will not allow these firms to continue to use Texans’ money to force a narrow political agenda. They have a legal duty to put their investors’ interests first, and we intend to make sure they do.”
Financial advisors and investment counselors are supposed to make investments with an eye to creating income and stability for their clients. That should be their only priority. More states needs to divest from BlackRock. Recently, Vanguard pulled out of a coalition of investment groups aiming to fight climate change.