Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders exceeded electoral expectations with critiques accusing the financial industry of deepening and perpetuating the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Today Stephen Silberstein, owner of the Stephen M. Sliberstein Revocable Trust, is pressuring the world’s largest asset manager to pay more attention to excessive pay and benefits for corporate executives, but the asset manager argues that the accusations are based on skewed research.

Silberstein, co-founder of Innovative Interfaces, a developer of library software, is bringing a shareholder proposal that orders BlackRock to alter its proxy voting practices on say-on-pay decisions.

"Investment companies have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interest of their customers and an obligation to vote accordingly,” said Silberstein in a released statement. “It is not in the best interests of investors, or the shareholders of BlackRock, to have ever escalating CEO pay, or even high CEO pay, at the companies in which they invest."

Earlier this year, New York-based BlackRock, which manages some $4.6 trillion in assets globally, was singled out in “The 100 Most Overpaid CEOs,” a report by not-for-profit corporate watchdog As You Sow, for approving 97 percent of the say-on-pay votes involving a list of ‘overpaid’ CEOs.

As You Sow makes executive pay a central issue of its advocacy efforts, according to Rosanna Landis Weaver, the report’s author. She argues that CEO overpay encourages financial manipulation, exacerbates widespread income inequality and encourages a short-term approach to corporate management which harms investors.

“To me it’s an issue of social justice,” Landis Weaver says. “It’s part of a larger issue of what kind of country do we want to be. As an investor, I just have crumbs in a 401(k), but I want my crumbs to be voting for a long-term sustainable future.”

Landis Weaver says As You Sow identified 30 red flags that were indicators of overpaid executive leadership, including a regression analysis of executive pay and financial performance, comparisons between pay increases and stock price; buybacks; dividend payouts; company value and employee pay; pay increases occurring at the expense of other stakeholder concerns; and CEO pay ratings by other third-party organizations including proxy-voting advisors.

In an appendix, the report examines how mutual fund companies approach say-on-pay votes to approve executive compensation packages, finding that among 23 major mutual fund companies, the "overpaid" CEO compensation packages were opposed at a median rate of 22 percent.

“It’s almost a presumption of innocence,” says Landis Weaver. “BlackRock is on the extreme, though, they’re barely voting against anything.”

According to As You Sow, Blackrock voted against three executive compensation packages out of 99 say-on-pay votes related to the "overpaid" CEO list, and opposed 1 percent of executive compensation packages overall.

Silberstein’s shareholder resolution identifies BlackRock as the posterchild for excessive CEO compensation, “By rejecting only 1 percent of CEO pay packages, Blackrock is exercising less fiduciary responsibility — by a factor of 10 — than the median investment manager, which rejects about 10 percent of CEO pay packages. Blackrock also fails to meet the standards suggested by the two advisory services, which recommend rejecting about 15 percent of CEO pay packages, and it falls below numerous pension funds which reject 20 percent or more of CEO pay packages.”

BlackRock is also the target of an online petition campaign calling for the company to “stop runaway CEO pay” that has attracted nearly 74,000 votes, including more than 1,500 ETF clients, 1,750 BlackRock investors and more than 2,000 customers.

So why single out BlackRock?

As You Sow notes that BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, ranks No. 51 on its list of "overpaid" CEOs. According to its report, Fink’s pay was raised 8 percent in 2015 to $26 million annually at a time when the company’s share price fell.

“It’s a double-whammy,” Landis-Weaver says. “He’s also made himself a public figure that speaks in a way where you would expect that his company is paying close attention to this issue. Larry Fink speaks eloquently against short-termism, but there’s a blatant disconnect between the values he espouses and the way BlackRock votes on say-on-pay.

BlackRock declined comment on Fink’s compensation, but argued that most of their effort to address executive compensation issues isn’t reflected in their proxy voting record.

“Our independent corporate governance team takes a holistic approach to promoting sound governance practices that affect returns for our clients including director independence and effectiveness, accurate financial reporting, and alignment with shareholders’ expectations – including compensation,” said Ed Sweeney, BlackRock’s director of corporate communications. “Executive compensation that is disconnected from company performance is a symptom of broader governance failures. “

Before using a say-on-pay vote to weigh in on corporate governance, BlackRock says in its proxy voting guidelines that it chooses to engage directly with senior management to address investor concerns.

In 2015, BlackRock engaged with approximately 700 companies in the U.S., and corporate governance was a focus of 45 percent of those meetings, said Sweeney. “If we determine that issues will not be remediated through engagement, we vote against specific proposals and will generally also vote against the directors on related committees.”

To that point, for the 2015 proxy season, BlackRock voted against “16 percent of management proposals related to compensation overall,” said Sweeney, and 162 directors serving on compensation committees.

Yet in his shareholder resolution, Silberstein argues that BlackRock more often supports compensation committee members while voting against company management on say-on-pay proposals.

In BlackRock’s case, As You Sow may have cherry-picked its statistic regarding the 2015 say-on-pay proxy votes — while the company did oppose just 3 percent of the companies in the report’s data set of 99 votes, BlackRock opposed 16 percent of the more than 12,400 say-on-pay votes it cast worldwide.

Yet BlackRock wasn’t alone in its low showing within As You Sow’s data set: Vanguard also opposed just 3 percent of the "overpaid" compensation packages.

“Too often, the frequency with which investors vote against management is used as the yardstick for measuring whether we're doing enough to promote good governance,” said David Hoffman, a Vanguard spokesperson, in a written statement. “In fact, voting is only part of the story. As we've said before, we are often able to accomplish as much, or more, through dialogue, where we can express specific, nuanced views and concerns, as we can through the ballot, where we have a binary, yes/no choice.”

TIAA's voting was little better, posting a 4 percent opposition rate. 

“We believe our approach to executive compensation — evaluating companies on a case-by-case basis and conducting direct engagement — is the most effective way to support practices that reward sustainable shareholder value,” said a TIAA spokesperson in an e-mailed statement.

As You Sow didn’t pan the entire mutual fund industry. Companies like Dimensional and Pimco, which each opposed 43 percent of the pay proposals in the report’s data set, and Charles Schwab, whcih voted against 35 percent, were held out as examples of improving corporate governance policies. On average, asset managers rejected 22 percent of the “overpaid” CEO compensation packages proposed by management.

“Most companies are at least considering their votes now,” Landis Weaver says, also acknowledging socially responsible fund managers like Calvert Investments and public pension funds for high levels of say-on-pay opposition to the ‘overpaid’ compensation packages. “They’re acknowledging that their voting is a responsibility. The reason you see 22 percent as the average is because of companies like BlackRock , TIAA and Vanguard.”