by Dale Folwell, CPA (R-NC) is the elected treasurer of the State of North Carolina. As State Treasurer, Folwell serves as the sole fiduciary of the multi-billion dollar North Carolina Retirement System. It is the 9th largest public pension fund in the United States. Slightly over 10% of the $111.4 billion fund is invested with asset manager BlackRock whose CEO Larry Fink has been at the forefront of ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing. This past Friday, December 9th, Folwell issued a call for Fink to either resign or be replaced as CEO of BlackRock.
From Folwell’s release:
“Unfortunately, Mr. Fink’s political agenda has gotten in the way of his same fiduciary duty. A focus on ESG is not a focus on returns, and potentially could force us to violate our own fiduciary duty of loyalty. Ultimately, Mr. Fink’s continued ideological pressure could result in using ESG scores against states and local governments, lowering their credit ratings and thus driving up their cost of borrowing at taxpayers’ expense. This not only concerns me as the state treasurer and ‘keeper of the public purse,’ but as Chair of the N.C. State Banking Commission and the Local Government Commission,” added Treasurer Folwell.
Folwell goes on to add that Fink’s activism and corporate coercion on behalf of “climate change” among other things is “at odds with BlackRock’s duty to investors.”
Let me step back a moment before continuing. I retired in September after working as a financial advisor and planner for 25 years. I have held FINRA Series 6, 63, 66, and 7 licenses plus the state life, health, and variable product insurance licenses. I continue to hold the Certified Financial Planner™ designation (for now) and taught two of its required classes for 10 years. This is where the “money” in the blog’s name originated. Because the blog was considered an “outside business activity”, I had to declare it to our corporate compliance department. As part of them “allowing” me to continue blogging, I had to make no mention of my day job as it might be construed as “advertising” by regulators. Indeed, I had to go back to some early posts to either edit or delete them.
In March 2018, BlackRock issued a release stating their plans to “engage” with the publicly traded firearms companies which included Ruger, Vista Outdoors, and pre-split Smith & Wesson. Items included in “engagement” were age restrictions, trigger locking technology, and discouraging the production of certain firearms. This came days after the Parkland murders. It was and remains a prime example of corporate virtue signaling. I said so in a blog post. Within a couple of days, the powers that be at my former company contacted me and said that post had to come down. Their rationale was that since our company did a great deal of business with BlackRock it might offend them. As I wasn’t yet ready to retire, I grudgingly complied.
Other states have also removed funds from BlackRock over their ESG policies. They include Florida which will be removing $2 billion, Arizona which reduced their investments with the company by 97%, and Texas over the boycott of “fossil fuels”.
The Folwell letter to BlackRock brings up another issue that impacts the firearms industry. That is the question of whether index funds and their managers should be able to vote their shares based upon “a social agenda”. He references Berkshire-Hathaway’s Charlie Munger in relation this this. Thus, it involves all asset managers with index funds or index based exchange traded funds (ETFs). In addition to BlackRock, you have the big index managers such as Vanguard and State Street and then every other company that has a small cap index fund. If they just voted with management as was done in the past, then it would be no problem. However, now they engage “proxy advisors” who “advise” them on how to vote. Two firms, ISS and Glass Lewis, control 97% of the market and they both trend to the left.
Remembering that activist shareholders at both Ruger and Smith & Wesson succeeded in getting essentially anti-gun resolutions passed, let’s look at institutional and index fund holdings for the major publicly traded firearms companies. Vista Outdoor leads the pack with 88% of its shares held by 374 institutional holders. The top five institutions hold a combined 42.95% of the company and the top index funds hold 17.49% of outstanding shares. Ruger is next with 71% of its shares held by 289 institutions. The top five institutions which is lead by BlackRock hold 38.79% of the company and the top index funds hold 19.52% of the outstanding shares. Finally, there is Smith & Wesson with 280 institutions holding 59% of the company. The top 5 institutions hold 28.05% of S&W with the top index funds comprising 10.07% of the outstanding shares. I am speculating that the institutional holding percentage at S&W is somewhat smaller due in part to the recent split of American Outdoor Brands into two companies.
I am happy that Dale Folwell is taking the bull by the horns and demanding Fink’s removal. I am sick and tired of corporate virtue signaling. I feel as though I am living in a world where those leftists that didn’t go into academia have burrowed their way into the corporate world and are now running it. Italian Communist theorist Antonio Gramsci and his theory of cultural hegemony seem to have found vindication in the actions of corporate virture signalers.