BlackRock, Larry Fink, and a New Form of Shareholder Empowerment | RealClearMarkets
Yes, it will be Larry Fink and his approximately 20-member U.S. investor stewardship team dictating sustainability-related disclosures (which means pretty much any corporate governance issue that one can think of, based on the new data being demanded), business practices, and underlying strategies for the 3,700 or so public companies that exist in the United States. Such a resource-constrained undertaking is truly absurd and will undermine the work of the only true loci of authority that know how to devise and implement strategies that can deal with climate change and all other corporate governance issues: the board and executive management. Unfortunately, because of its enormous voting power, BlackRock may be able to get public companies to comply, especially if one or more of the other large wealth managers with enormous voting power follows its lead. If Larry Fink s letter to CEOs is not about shareholder empowerment albeit in a new, more powerful, and deleterious form then I don t know what is.