By: Marty Raminoff
BlackRock, the oversized New York City based investment company, is being bullied by Bluebell Capital — a significantly smaller London-based firm.
As reported by the NY Post, Bluebell called on BlackRock’s Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink to step down for his “hypocrisy” in pushing a “woke” political agenda. BlackRock is currently the world’s largest asset manager, with roughly $8 trillion in assets under management as of January 2022. Bluebell has just $250 million in assets under management. This didn’t stop Bluebell from ripping BlackRock and accusing its CEO of flouting ESG principles. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is used to screen investments based on their corporate policies and to encourage firms to act responsibly.
Bluebell co-founder Giuseppe Bivona says BlackRock is not keeping its commitments. “We see BlackRock endorsing a number of bad practices from a governance, social and environmental perspective which is not actually in tune with what they say,” said Bivona in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday. “Let me say that when the price of coal was around $76 per ton, BlackRock was talking about essentially divesting,” Bivona continued. “Now that the price of coal is $380 per ton, they are talking about responsible ownership. I think there is a high correlation between BlackRock’s strategy on coal and the price of coal.” In November, Bluebell investors penned a letter to BlackRock expressing concerns regarding the “reputational risk (including greenwashing risk) to which BlackRock under the leadership of Larry Fink have unreasonably exposed the company.”
BlackRock has refused to give in to Bluebell’s calls to oust Fink, shake up its board, or review its ESG strategy. “In the past 18 months, Bluebell has waged a number of campaigns to promote their climate and governance agenda,” a spokesperson for BlackRock told The Post. “BlackRock Investment Stewardship did not support their campaigns as we did not consider them to be in the best economic interests of our clients.” BlackRock insiders told The Post last week that Bluebell holds ownership shares of less than 0.01% in BlackRock. A source also boasted about BlackRock’s performance, saying the stock is up some 4,900% since its IPO in 1999. By comparison, the S&P 500 is up about 365% during the same time frame.
Bluebell, which launched just three years ago, has already stepped above its perch, challenged the policies and executives of some of the world’s largest companies. As per Reuters, in the past, it also publicly challenged GSK Plc, Glencore Plc, Vivendi SE, and Danone SA , each of which it owned a very small percentage of shares in. Besides for gaining plenty of media coverage by taking on the giant companies’ policies or executives, Bluebell actually helped oust the chief executive of Danone.
In August, BlackRock faced more widespread scrutiny. As per the Post, state attorney generals from 19 states, led by Arizona’s Mark Brnovich, wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking it to look into BlackRock’s relations with China. The letter had accused BlackRock of doing business with Chinese companies that don’t concern themselves with the environmental, while simultaneously pushing US companies to meet net-zero carb emissions. As a result, since then Republican state politicians and treasurers have been divesting funds away from BlackRock.
