I know, I know. People (like me!) who write a lot about a single subject – in my case obviously leaders and followers – sometimes till the same soil. We return to topics that grab our attention not because we’re being repetitive, but precisely because we are not. Because things change, and people change, and the lives of leaders such as Larry Fink don’t end, they continue. They continue chapter after chapter until the leader leaves.
Fink is the chief executive officer of BlackRock. (He has appeared in at least two of my previous posts, to which the links below.) BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with, at the end of last year, some $8.59 trillion under its management.
For years Fink has tried to lead other leaders by being reasonably progressive. By “reasonably progressive” I do not mean to suggest he is a flaming liberal. He is not. But he is someone who has been trying to play a modest role in addressing some of the world’s most pressing, and intractable, problems, above all climate change. Specifically, Fink has been at the forefront of American corporate leaders on E.S.G. – on how environmental, social, and governance goals should be core to how companies do business.
No good deed goes unpunished. So, for his efforts, Fink has been attacked by the right for betraying capitalism by being too “woke” – too responsive to the prevailing political winds. And he has been attacked by the left for, above all, not ditching BlackRock’s investments in fossil fuels. Just recently the left had a field day with Fink when his company announced it would appoint to its board the head of the Saudi Arabian Oil Group (Aramco), which, oh by the way, is the biggest oil producer in the world.
Fink is, of course, trying to thread the needle, to strike a balance between two conflicting forces. First and foremost, he’s a businessman, a leader whose primary responsibility is make money for his company, as much money as possible. But second, he’s a citizen, a global citizen, an American citizen, a leader who has demonstrated some sense of what it means to be civic minded.
Still, in recent months Fink has been more assertively prioritizing the first and backpedaling somewhat on the second. He has strongly defended BlackRock’s newly close ties to Saudi Arabia. And he has retreated on E.S.G., even telling a group in Aspen in June that he had stopped using the term because it had been “weaponized.”
It’s hard to fault Fink for doing his day job as well as he knows how. But it’s not hard to fault him for retreating on E.S.G. If not Fink, CEO of the largest asset management company in the world, who?