BlackRock describes retirement savers as its core purpose. Yet in the 2025 proxy season, it supported 2 of 129 climate-related resolutions globally, new research shows.
PRESS RELEASE
At its online Annual General Meeting today, BlackRock avoided answering a direct challenge from Follow This: is the world’s largest asset manager doing enough to protect the retirement savings entrusted to it?
A new research report released simultaneously by Follow This finds a stark gap between BlackRock’s stated purpose and its stewardship record: in the 2025 proxy season, BlackRock supported just 2 out of 129 climate-related resolutions globally — a rate one-ninth of the market average.
More than half of BlackRock’s assets under management is linked to retirement savings — schoolteachers, firefighters, union workers. BlackRock holds large stakes in virtually every major oil and gas company in the world. As a passive index manager, it cannot easily exit those positions. Its primary tool for managing the financial risks they carry is proxy voting. That tool is going unused.
“Climate change is a financial risk with implications for the global economy,” says Kaja Jakubiec, head researcher at Follow This. “BlackRock has a fiduciary duty to its beneficiaries to avoid economic collapse due the climate crisis”.
“BlackRock must use its proxy vote now, or it cannot guarantee it will be able to pay out pensions 30 years from now,” Jakubiec adds.
BlackRock’s own research tells the story
BlackRock’s own internal research projects a cumulative 25% loss in global output over the next two decades under a “do nothing” scenario on climate. Independent analysis corroborates the scale: EDHEC’s Risk Climate Impact Institute finds more than 40% of global equity value at risk if decarbonisation does not accelerate. Ortec Finance warns that returns for the 30 largest US pension funds could fall by up to 50% by 2050.
BlackRock retreats while peers push forward
BlackRock has withdrawn from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. Larry Fink’s 2026 annual letter to investors does not mention climate once.
Other large asset managers operating under the same regulatory pressures have made different choices. Legal & General Investment Management, managing £1.2 trillion under comparable fiduciary duties, supported 42% of climate resolutions in the same period. State Street supported climate proposals at more than ten times BlackRock’s rate.
Potential legal exposure
ERISA — the US federal law governing pension funds and retirement plans — defines prudent-investor standards. A fiduciary that identifies a material financial risk in its own published research, and then declines to use its primary stewardship tool to manage it, faces genuine questions of legal exposure. BlackRock has not published any financial analysis showing that supporting climate resolutions would harm its beneficiaries’ long-term interests.
