Comptroller Glenn Hegar: Financial Companies Withdrawing from Climate Change Group

While I applaud the spirit of these announcements, I assure the people of Texas that I remain committed to enforcing the laws of our state as passed by the Texas Legislature.

Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN, Texas – Today, both J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM) and State Street Global Advisors announced they would withdraw from the Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), with State Street commenting that the “enhanced Climate Action 100+ Phase 2 requirements for signatories are not consistent with our independent approach to proxy voting and portfolio company engagement.”

Additionally, BlackRock Inc. simultaneously announced it would scale back its commitment to the CA100+ and transfer its membership to a subsidiary, BlackRock International Ltd.

These are welcome developments and a testament to my efforts to bring greater transparency to an opaque and poorly defined segment of the financial sector, as well as to foster an intellectually honest conversation around ESG investing. This lack of transparency created an environment that put politics above profits and led many financial firms to disregard their fiduciary duty to clients. 

As part of our process creating the list of financial companies deemed to be boycotting the oil and gas industry, we heard firms telling Texas one thing but then providing very different and often contradictory information to states like New York or California. Unfortunately, some of that doublespeak continues in these announcements, with a JPMAM spokesperson touting “the significant investment it has made in its investment stewardship team and engagement capabilities, as well as the development of its own climate risk engagement framework” and BlackRock attempting a kind of shell game by shifting its membership to another entity under the BlackRock umbrella.

While I applaud the spirit of these announcements, I assure the people of Texas that I remain committed to enforcing the laws of our state as passed by the Texas Legislature. The people of Texas and Texas lawmakers were clear when they entrusted me with this important task — Texas tax dollars should not be invested in a manner that undermines our state’s economy or threatens key Texas industries and jobs.

My team will examine our listing process, as three of the largest money managers on the planet have now pulled back from the CA100+ coalition, and we will continue to make listing decisions based on Texas law.