Non-profit Consumers’ Research launched an ad campaign attacking the investment management firm BlackRock over its investments in China.
The ad alleges that CEO Larry Fink “loves to tell Americans how to live, but he negotiated against America,” directing investments toward China. BlackRock has an investment valued at $15 million in surveillance company Hikivision, according to SEC filings reported by Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect.
The Commerce Department added Hikivision and other tech companies to its Entity List in 2019, with the agency saying those companies were “implicated in human rights violations” against minorities.
The campaign is part of a larger initiative by the non-profit called the Consumers First Initiative, targeting so-called “woke” companies.
Consumers’ Research said that the ads also target BlackRock because of what the group views as the company’s “woke” policies, in comments to CNBC. BlackRock told CNBC it had “no comment” on the campaign.
“No amount of woke posturing can hide what BlackRock is really up to,” Consumers’ Research executive director Will Hild said in a statement to the media. “Any company trying to use woke politics to mask their misdeeds should see this campaign and know they could be next.”
Fink has been supportive of investments to combat climate change, and has pushed for increased diversity in his firm’s higher ranks.
“Getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is going to require a revolution in the production of everything we produce, and a revolution in everything we consume,” Fink said at the Middle East Green Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Monday. “And that’s going to require a large amount of investment, a large amount of ingenuity and a large amount of innovation.”
Other ad campaigns by Consumers’ Research have targeted Coca-Cola, after the company condemned Georgia’s new voting laws, and Nike over that company’s political stances.