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