World's top three asset managers oversee $300bn fossil fuel investments

By Dilip -
The world’s three largest money managers have built a combined $300bn fossil fuel investment portfolio using money from people’s private savings and pension contributions, the Guardian can reveal. BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street, which together oversee assets worth more than China’s entire GDP, have continued to grow billion-dollar stakes in some of the most carbon-intensive companies since the Paris agreement, financial data shows.

The two largest asset managers, BlackRock and Vanguard, have also routinely opposed motions at fossil fuel companies that would have forced directors to take more action on climate change, the analysis reveals. The investment rise is driven by the success in the last decade of tracker funds that use algorithms to follow major stock exchange indices such as the FTSE 100 and S&P 500.

The Guardian has worked with the thinktank InfluenceMap and the business data specialists ProxyInsight to analyse the role played by asset managers in the financing and management of some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies. Figures compiled by InfluenceMap show how Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street – known as the big three – have become crucial climate actors in the financial world. They are the largest money managers in the $74tn industry.... read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/12/top-three-asset-managers-fossil-fuel-investments

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