Against that backdrop, BlackRock poured record amounts of money into US political campaigns this year. Fink said Wednesday that he has been spending a lot of time in Washington to “correct the narrative.”
The state treasury will immediately have Florida’s custody bank freeze about $1.43 billion worth of long-term securities and remove BlackRock as the manager of approximately $600 million worth of short-term overnight investments, Patronis said Thursday.
DeSantis Escalates
Pulling back from BlackRock is the latest step in a broader strategy orchestrated by DeSantis of clashing with corporations for their embrace of ESG values. Back in August, DeSantis passed a resolution calling for state funds to be invested without considering the “ideological agenda” of the ESG movement.
Patronis took the governor’s guidance and acted against BlackRock.
“The CFO heard the governor loud and clear and accordingly acted to divest state treasury funds from ESG-focused BlackRock,” Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, said.
The move follows other similar clashes with corporate giants, such as PayPal Holdings Inc. and Walt Disney Co.
DeSantis is seen as a key rival of Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. The governor won a landslide re-election victory in November promising to battle what he called “woke ideology” being promoted by Wall Street banks, asset managers and big-tech companies in Florida.
BlackRock still manages about $13 billion for Florida’s State Board of Administration, which invests for the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan and more than 25 other state funds, according to an SBA spokeswoman. The Florida Department of Financial Services manages approximately $60 billion in taxpayer money.
“This feels like a political determination, not the deliberative determination you’d expect a fiduciary to make,” Lichtenstein said.