In our latest publication with Competition & Change, Joseph Baines and I examine the role of the Big Three asset managers – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – in corporate environmental governance. Specifically, we focus on the Big Three’s relations with the Carbon Majors: a handful of fossil fuel, cement and mining companies responsible the bulk of industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.
What we find is that the Big Three are heavily invested in the Carbon Majors, that they more frequently oppose rather than support shareholder resolutions aimed at improving environmental governance and that their voting is more likely to lead to the failure than to the success of these resolutions. Remarkably, there is little to distinguish the proxy voting of the Big Three’s ESG funds from their non-ESG funds. Overall, our analysis raises serious doubts about the Big Three’s credentials as environmental stewards and argues instead that they are little more than stewards of the status quo of shareholder value maximization.
The article is available in open access on the Competition and Change website (linked above).