Ben Zycher on the hypocrisy of BlackRock’s ‘sustainability’ initiative:
Blackrock—the largest asset manager in the world—has announced in the form of a public letter from its CEO Larry Fink to corporate managements that henceforth “Sustainability [will serve] as Blackrock’s New Standard for Investing.”
It is unsurprising that nowhere in the various materials issued by Blackrock in support of this new mission is there to be found an actual definition of “sustainability.” Instead, Blackrock informs us that
Sustainability in the investment context means understanding and incorporating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into investment analysis and decision-making.
That “definition” is worse than useless . . .
. . . as it quite obviously allows Fink and the Blackrock bureaucrats below him to impose their own political and policy preferences (“ESG factors”) upon the business decisions of the firms in which Blackrock is invested heavily, while shunting aside the obvious conflicts and tradeoffs among the myriad ESG objectives that can be imagined.
Read more on Real Clear Markets.
Image from Nattanan Kanchanaprat at Pixabay.