Blackrock CEO Larry Fink and Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser. Getty Images / Erik McGregor, FAYEZ NURELDINE, JOEL SAGET, Collage: Dominik Schmitt
Blackrock appointed Aramco CEO Amin Nasser to its board of directors on Monday.
Nasser runs the world‘s largest oil producer, which is majority-owned by the Saudi Arabian state.
His appointment is at odds with Larry Fink’s support for investments that are ESG compliant.
This is a machine translation of an article by our US colleagues at Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor. We welcome feedback at the end of the article.
Blackrock’s decision to Aramco CEO Amin Nasser to join the board on Mondaysignals that the asset manager may not be as socially and sustainably committed as they often claim.
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Is Nasser a miscast?
“Amin Nasser may be a lovely person, but he represents Aramco symbolically and substantively. He’s the wrong player here unless [Blackrock-CEO] Larry Fink really wants to blur his image on the ESG front,” Yale professor and management expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said on Tuesday on CNBC.
Nasser runs the world‘s largest oil producer, which is primarily owned by the state of Saudi Arabia – the Gulf Kingdom, the blatant human rights violations and according to one intelligence report the Biden administration approved the 2018 killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
It offers “a unique perspective” for the company, which has made advancing environmental sustainability one of its key business priorities, Blackrock said in a press release.
Amin Nasser is the CEO of the world‘s largest oil producer. picture alliance / Vcg/MAXPPP/dpa | Vcg
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Blackrock promotes sustainable and socially responsible investments
Fink first drew attention to his and Blackrock’s ESG engagement in 2020 when he his annual open letter stated that “Climate risks are investment risks”. One wonders if he still stands by that statement now that Aramco’s CEO is on the board of directors of the company, which manages more than $8 trillion in assets.
Blackrock has vigorously defended its ESG practices as both consistent with its fiduciary duty to put the interests of its clients first and a necessary part of properly managing investment risk.
The company has been fully focused on investing in the clean energy transition. Last year, one of their funds acquired a Massachusetts-based one Renewable Natural Gas Company and hired a former McKinsey senior sustainability executive to spearhead efforts to invest in a sustainable economy.
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This article has been translated from English. You can find the original here.