BlackRock’s support for shareholder ESG proposals fell again in 2023-2024, its report shows, as the US asset manager continues to face criticism from both sides of the ESG debate.
The firm supported only 20 shareholder proposals related to environmental and social factors, or around 4% of the total.
This was a fall from 7% in the 2022-2023 period and a further fall from 22% and 47% respectively in 2021-2022 and 2020-2021.
The decline came as the number of proposals increased from to 455 to 493.
In the report, BlackRock attributed the low support to the poor quality of proposals.
“In our assessment, the majority of these were over-reaching, lacked economic merit, or sought outcomes that were unlikely to promote long-term shareholder value,” the report said.
“A significant percentage were focused on business risks that companies already had processes in place to address, making them redundant. In addition, within this same set of proposals, we saw a greater number seeking to roll back company efforts to address material sustainability-related risks.
“We determined that these proposals were also overly prescriptive or lacked economic merit. As a result of these factors, like last year, proposals on climate and natural capital and company impacts on people continued to garner low investor support.”
The decline in support from ESG comes as BlackRock continues to face a backlash from politicians in the US, particularly in the Republican party. Earlier this month, the Secretary of State for Indiana issued a cease and desist letter to BlackRock, accusing the firm of making misleading statements about the performance of ESG products.
