NYC Comptroller Wants City Pension Funds to Ditch BlackRock

BlackRock stock has risen about 2% in 2025. (Bing Guan / Bloomberg)

Key Points

• New York City Comptroller Brad Lander recommended withdrawing $42 billion from BlackRock-managed index funds due to unmet climate expectations.
• Lander also suggested removing funds from Fidelity Investments and PanAgora Asset Management for ceasing decarbonization proxy campaigns.
• BlackRock responded that Lander’s criticisms politicize public pension funds, potentially undermining New Yorkers’ retirement security.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander has asked the trustees of three large city pension funds to pull $42 billion from index funds managed by BlackRock .

In a news release, Lander said that BlackRock and two other money managers failed to meet the climate expectations for the New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS), Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS), and Board of Education Retirement System (BERS).

In the release, Lander suggests that BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager, bent to pressure from the Trump administration by stopping the climate activist proxy campaigns once championed by CEO Larry Fink.

In a Wednesday letter to Lander, BlackRock Managing Director Armando Senra said BlackRock had presented a program of pursuing “explicit climate and decarbonization investment objectives” to the city’s funds.

Senra said Lander’s criticisms “are another instance of the politicization of public pension funds, which undermines the retirement security of hardworking New Yorkers.”

Fidelity Investments and the Boston quant firm PanAgora Asset Management should also lose the smaller sums that they manage, because they also have stopped proxy campaigns for decarbonization, said Lander in a report to pension trustees Wednesday.

“The systemic risk of the climate crisis threatens the long-term value of New York City’s pension funds,” said Lander, in his announcement. “Our Net Zero plan is a core part of our fiduciary duty to protect these assets.”

For BlackRock’s $42 billion mandate to actually go out for rebidding, Lander’s recommendation would have to be reviewed and approved by the trustees of the three pension funds. Lander won’t be around when that happens. His term as comptroller ends Dec. 31, and is reported to be running for Congress afterward.

Some Republican state governments have joined the Trump administration in steering corporations, universities, and other large institutions away from climate activism. Officials in California and New York are using their pension dollars and state regulations to push back.

Write to Bill Alpert at william.alpert@barrons.com