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Comment by no_butterscotch | Hacker News Reader

This isn't entirely true.

Blackrock has a lot more influence over the companies they hold. They threaten to dump stock of companies if those companies won't adhere to their ESG scores, which will crash the companies. They threaten not to be buyers of companies if they don't adhere to their will. Market fundamentals don't matter.

More info here:

- "How BlackRock Has RIGGED the Climate Crisis": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDEGMU6sIEk

- Blackrock buying up single family homes at a record clip (timestamped), this short video on Blackrock's "Aladdin" AI: https://youtu.be/AWBRldjVzuM?t=363

- "BlackRock: The Most Evil Business In The World ": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAIcet1mQwg

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All the criticisms seem basically true, they just don't make any sense.

Since their job is mostly to own all of the companies out there, they own most of the evil companies, and therefore they must logically be "The Most Evil Business In The World". Doesn't take an ounce of investigative journalism.

But as long as their job is mostly to own all the companies, they can't do much dumping of stock, for ESG or other reasons.

And when your job is mostly to own all the companies, then sure, market fundamentals don't matter by definition.

>They threaten to dump stock of companies if those companies won't adhere to their ESG scores, which will crash the companies.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but once the shares are on the market, what impact does selling them have on the companies?

> Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but once the shares are on the market, what impact does selling them have on the companies?

It affects the company's market cap, the wealth of the company's shareholders, & the employees/executives with stock options as part of their compensation plans. A significant drop will share price may even trigger the other shareholders to vote on changing the management in charge of defying the ESG mandate.

Supply and demand. Dumping shares increases supply and has a neutral (or potentially negative) impact on demand. So price goes down.

These video essays are nothing more than opinion pieces since they never provide any evidence and citation on what they say.

Do you have a non-conspiracy person Youtube source?

The whole ESG thing is a weird Kabuki theater thing to hang your argument on. Blackrock had almost no power to enforce ESG, and companies almost have no reason to comply. The fact that do many choose to do so is pretty voluntary.

Guy says that blockrock threatens to sell or not buy based on your ESG scores.

Your rebuttal is, blackrock no power to enforce ESG scores. And companies have no reason to comply.

Is a huge financial institution threatening to sell not a 'reason' and a form of power?

When has Blackrock tanked a stock and where are the ESG changes? Ultimately the are fiduciary as an asset manager for their clients they can't decide to tank stocks for fun. A huge part of the holdings are in ETF which they can threaten to sell. Any deviation from typical huge fund manager behaviour when it come to governance is big finance news they hardly ever go against the grain. The biggest reason tho is that no one in Finance really gives a hoot about ESG, only returns

>Any deviation from typical huge fund manager behaviour

You make it sound extremely subjective, but Blackrock is (I think) mostly managing index funds, and it should be easy to quantify how well they track an index.

I'm talking about corporate governance stuff like AGM and voting. They own a so much of companies because of index funds, but when they do make noise it makes the headlines of finance news.

Blackrock funds have mandates. If the mandate says ESG score must be >10 then that fund must hold ESG >10 stocks.

Nobody is holding a gun to investors heads, forcing them to allocate money into funds that have this mandate that then only buy stocks that fulfil this mandate.

> Is a huge financial institution threatening to sell not a 'reason' and a form of power?

Investors threaten to sell stock all the time. Sales are shit - im gonna sell my stock unless you fire some people. Not paying a dividend - im gonna sell my stock unless you pay one. Stock price is performing poorly - im gonna sell my stock unless you do a stock split to con people into thinking the stock is cheaper.

>Blackrock had almost no power to enforce ESG, and companies almost have no reason to comply.

When Blackrock is the largest, or one of the largest shareholders in many companies - YES, they have enormous power in the decision making of those companies.

If you buy shares in a Blackrock S&P 500 fund, which is the sort of fund that accounts for their huge holdings of most public companies, then I don't think they have the power to dump stocks that are on the official list.

That would be weird. I mean, at least it would be much more newsworthy than this article, and I would expect to have heard. And I would expect massive lawsuits and regulators out for blood.

I could be wrong. Do you have a source?

Do I have as source about the Law of Supply & Demand? Or that the largest shareholder has more sway in the day to day operations of a company?

Blackrock is shareholding on behalf of individual investors. The amount of decision they can wield is pretty constrained. If I hire you to do my shopping, you can't just cross items off the list because you want to power trip on the butcher.

Furthermore, even if I buy into the hypothetical that Blackrock would dump a company from its portfolio over ESG, how much would it actually drop the price of the stock if the fundamentals are the same? Is the problem that there are not enough greedy investors on Wall Street?

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