BlackRock’s ‘stewardship’ is anything but

Last year, we published a study into the influence of US asset managers(opens in new window) on the Dutch stock market. The figures were undeniable: the four largest US asset managers (BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity) together manage 11.8 per cent of the Amsterdam stock market’s market capitalisation, more than ten times as much as the five largest Dutch counterparts (APG, PGGM, Robeco, Aegon, and Achmea) combined. BlackRock alone is the largest shareholder in 14 of the 25 largest Dutch-listed companies, including Shell, ING, Ahold Delhaize, and ASML. And unlike Dutch managers, these American parties systematically vote against climate resolutions at shareholders’ meetings. Our conclusion: Dutch pension funds, which effectively provide the capital, must reclaim their influence and reconsider their partnership with BlackRock.

That article prompted a response from Monique Donders(opens in new window) , head of BlackRock in the Netherlands. She states that BlackRock’s stewardship policy is “broadly embedded” in its role as an investor and that the focus therein lies on long-term financial value creation. But what the long term requires has changed strikingly in character over the past six years. In 2020, BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink(opens in new window) wrote that “climate risk is investment risk” and that climate change had become “a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects”. Now, six years later, we see that the reality is different: BlackRock and other US asset managers are, in fact, increasingly voting against climate resolutions put forward by other shareholders. In her response, Donders attempts to bridge the gap between the earlier analysis and current actions, but in doing so, she primarily points to the procedures surrounding the stewardship programme. However, our analysis suggests that what BlackRock actually does has little to do with the long term and is therefore not in the interests of the Dutch pension funds that outsource hundreds of billions to the asset manager.

Follow management

The fiduciary duty to which Donders refers seems, in fact, to mean primarily that BlackRock supports company management. Donders herself acknowledges that it is “factually correct” that BlackRock has supported “few” shareholder proposals countering company management in recent years. BlackRock’s own Global Voting Spotlight(opens in new window) shows exactly how few: of the 3,399 shareholder proposals on which BlackRock voted globally, 88 per cent followed management’s recommendation. For climate proposals, that figure is as high as approximately 98 per cent.

BlackRock thus appears to almost never vote in favour of more ambitious climate policy if management is not in favour of it. Donders notes that around one-fifth of the climate proposals called for a reversal of climate policy. But even then, according to BlackRock’s own figures, BlackRock voted against over 180 shareholder resolutions calling on companies to take more climate action. How this ‘follow management’ policy constitutes ‘stewardship’ remains unclear to us.

In her article, Donders states that BlackRock is transparent about the choices it makes and that if clients wish to influence companies on specific issues, they can do so via Voting Choice(opens in new window) and the Climate & Decarbonisation Stewardship Programme(opens in new window) . However, the figures show that in practice these programmes are marginal phenomena. In the first quarter of 2026, just 11 per cent of BlackRock’s assets under management used Voting Choice to select an alternative voting guideline. Two years earlier, this figure was 10 per cent, an increase of a single percentage point over two years. The Climate & Decarbonisation Stewardship Programme, in which BlackRock explicitly pursues decarbonisation targets, accounts for just two per cent(opens in new window) of total capital. For the vast majority of the capital, BlackRock’s ‘follow management’ policy is therefore the voting policy of choice.

The ‘follow management’ policy is not without consequences. BlackRock is the largest shareholder in 14 of the 25 largest listed companies in the Netherlands. BlackRock’s policy, therefore, sets the tone for a large part of the Dutch stock market. Directors of these major Dutch companies know that their largest shareholder almost always supports their proposals. And this obedience is supposed to be in the interests of BlackRock’s clients? 

Reinforced short-term focus

BlackRock’s “long-term focus” also does not seem very long-term in practice. As Donders writes, BlackRock only assesses proposals where climate risks are “financially material”. But the financial risks for fossil fuel oil and gas companies will only materialise in the 2040s and 2050s: the IEA(opens in new window) calculates that the market value of these companies will fall by 25 to 60 per cent as climate targets are met. That is a time horizon that has long since ceased to exist in capital markets. The average holding period for a share on the NYSE has fallen from nearly eight years in the 1950s to around five and a half months(opens in new window) in 2020. The time horizon on which financial markets make decisions is therefore much shorter than that over which climate risks materialise, and certain corporate assets lose value (stranded assets). Mark Carney(opens in new window) called this the ‘tragedy of the horizon’. The consequence of this is that companies with more short-sighted shareholders systematically lobby(opens in new window) more strongly against climate policy.

What financial materiality means in practice at BlackRock becomes clear when you follow Shell’s recent shareholder meetings. Under BlackRock’s standard voting policy, votes were cast against Follow This’s resolutions in 2022, 2023, and 2024(opens in new window) because it was deemed not to be in the shareholders’ interests. And in 2025, when a group of pension funds(opens in new window) sought information about the risks of Shell’s LNG growth strategy in relation to their net-zero target, BlackRock voted against the resolution, claiming it would have(opens in new window) “no demonstrable economic benefit for shareholders”. If even a resolution that explicitly focuses on financial risks – precisely the criterion against which BlackRock itself claims to assess matters – fails to gain support, backing management appears to be the standard policy. It’s hard to argue that strategy is in the best interests of the long-term investor.

The idea that BlackRock looks after the interests of long-term investors is also difficult to sustain when you look at the equity assets under management: almost half(opens in new window) is in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) – products that BlackRock(opens in new window) itself describes as instruments that institutional clients are increasingly using to achieve higher short-term portfolio returns.

Time for our pension funds to take back control

The limited scope of the stewardship programme and the relative lack of focus on the long term do not appear to be in the interests of Dutch pension funds. After all, they do invest for the long term: for their members, the horizon extends decades into the future, and climate risks are undeniably financially material within that horizon.

Yet Dutch pension funds entrust hundreds of billions to BlackRock. Although they cast some of their votes independently, it is their capital that contributes to BlackRock’s position as the largest shareholder in companies such as Shell, ING, Ahold, and ASML. Their capital makes BlackRock’s ‘follow management’ policy the guiding principle for a large part of the Dutch stock market.

To safeguard the long-term interests of their clients, pension funds will need to strengthen the European management of their assets. This is also a matter of strategic autonomy: as long as voting rights over the direction of Dutch and European listed companies remain largely in American hands, decisions on climate, industry, and long-term investments are made elsewhere.

Furthermore, we must not underestimate the impact of the Trump administration’s rollback of climate policy on US asset managers such as BlackRock. For example, many US-based asset managers, including BlackRock, have withdrawn from climate initiatives such as the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative(opens in new window) . Furthermore, BlackRock, claiming to be under pressure from new guidelines issued by US financial regulators, decided last year not to actively engage on specific issues with approximately 2,800 US companies(opens in new window) in which it holds more than a five per cent stake. For this reason, the question of whether cooperation with BlackRock should be terminated is not merely a European matter, but is also relevant in the US.

And indeed, some US pension funds are considering doing just that. The three largest pension schemes in New York are considering transferring(opens in new window) the $42 billion they have under management with BlackRock to another asset manager.

In the Netherlands, the PME pension fund has already terminated(opens in new window) its partnership with BlackRock. It’s time for other Dutch pension funds to follow this example and reclaim their influence. Outsourcing stewardship to an asset manager that votes in line with company management on 98 per cent of climate proposals, and who is under political pressure to scale back its engagement capacity, is not a passive technical choice; it is a transfer of control over the strategic direction of Dutch and European companies. For whoever manages the allocation of capital largely determines the direction of the economy, industry, and climate policy. It is time for pension funds to reclaim that power.

Note: This article is a summary of the response published by SOMO in the journal ESB. The full article (in Dutch), including a response from BlackRock, can be found here(opens in new window) .