“We want BlackRock to let investors know how their money is going to be managed,” Tennessee State Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti stated.

By Kevin Stocklin
12/18/2023

For the first time, and in what may prove to be a precedent-setting case, a global asset manager is being sued for allegedly leveraging investors’ money to pursue political goals.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti filed a lawsuit on Monday against BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager with approximately $9 trillion in assets under management, charging that the firm “has been on the forefront of using aggressive strategies to push controversial environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals across the assets it manages.”

“We want BlackRock to let investors know how their money is going to be managed,” Mr. Skrmetti told The Epoch Times. BlackRock must inform investors, he said, “if their money is going to be managed in a way that furthers ideological ends.”

If BlackRock wants to offer ESG investment funds, he said, “they're allowed to market those products, they’re allowed to let people buy those products, people can invest in purposeful funds that seek to accomplish something other than just making the money, but there has to be transparency about that.”
The lawsuit charges that BlackRock leverages its power over corporations whose shares it owns to pressure management to pursue goals such as achieving “net-zero” carbon emissions and aligning its policies with the 2015 Paris Climate Accords. It also alleges that BlackRock has misled investors, claiming that they can earn higher returns through ESG investing.

“BlackRock has admitted that promoting ESG aims—like companies’ radically reducing their carbon output—can conflict with its funds’ financial performance,” the lawsuit states. “It is thus only fair that consumers know if the hard-earned funds they invest will be leveraged to BlackRock’s ESG ends, rather than to maximizing financial returns.”