Killing BlackRock's Fossil Fuel Investments With Kindness
Peter Rugh Sep 26
Employees for BlackRock — the $6.3 trillion, multinational investment management firm — were given a treat on Wednesday afternoon as they left the company’s midtown office over the lunch hour. Few, however, stopped to read the packaging on the KIND bars the band of smiling environmentalists handed them. Perhaps they were saving them for later. Had they taken a closer look, they would probably notice something was a bit off on the granola bar’s familiar wrapping.
“BlackRock is now the world’s biggest investor, but it’s got a big problem,” it read.
‘BlackRock is an IV right into the arm of the climate crisis.’
The company made nearly $5 billion in 2017 and Barron’s has speculated that the firm’s founder and CEO, Larry Fink, is the “new conscience of Wall Street,” in part because of statements like this one, included in Fink’s annual open letter to fellow chief executives earlier this year: “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.” Fink is on the board of the Nature Conservancy and has advocated for investment strategies that promote sustainability and social well-being over the long term.
So what’s so problematic about BlackRock?
https://indypendent.org/2018/09/killing-blackrocks-fossil-fuel-investments-with-kindness/
