The trustees of New York City’s five pension funds have shelved recommendations from outgoing New York City Comptroller Brad Lander to rebid BlackRock’s U.S. public equities index mandate and to terminate agreements with Fidelity due to allegedly “inadequate” decarbonization plans.
“While I am disappointed in the decision of NYCERS’ trustees to table my recommendation to rebid BlackRock’s mandate today, I hope the trustees will vote to adopt it in the new year, as Comptroller-Elect Mark Levine takes office,” Lander said in a statement issued on December 17.
Lander noted that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote in a 2020 letter to CEOs that “climate risk is investment risk” and that the firm was shifting its investment strategy to focus on climate-related investing.
“Unfortunately, BlackRock in 2025 is failing to act like it,” Lander said regarding Fink’s position. “BlackRock has chosen to backtrack on their commitments and they now refuse to conduct proxy engagement with companies where they own a significant share of the stock.”
Lander, whose term as comptroller will end on January 1, 2026, made his recommendation—after updating the city’s Net Zero Implementation Plan—for three of the five pension funds: the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York and the New York City Board of Education Retirement System. Lander said the recommendations were based on a “rigorous evaluation.” BlackRock’s mandate is set to expire at the end of 2026.
When Lander made his recommendation in November, he included agreements with PanAgora Asset Management as ones to be reconsidered. According to his latest announcement, he considers those agreements appropriate to continue, after PanAgora submitted an amended net zero plan that included additional information about its engagement with portfolio companies to encourage them to adopt net zero plans.
In response to Lander’s accusations, BlackRock’s Head of the Americas Institutional Business Armando Senra published a letter to Lander accusing him of politicizing the city’s pension funds and stating that altering any of the funds’ portfolios would have to undergo a review process involving the plans’ board and the New York City Bureau of Asset Management investment team. The Bureau of Asset Management, part of the comptroller’s office, is responsible for overseeing the investment portfolios of the city’s public pension systems.
According to Senra’s letter, the world’s largest asset manager has had multiple conversations with the bureau’s investment team concerning investment and decarbonization plans over the past several months and met with the funds’ investment team in November to provide an update on BlackRock’s climate and decarbonization stewardship program.
“During that meeting, we informed the investment team that a version of this program is now available to each of the five pension plans,” Senra wrote.
Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a nonpartisan business advocacy group, said in a statement that Lander’s recommendation is “unilateral and incomprehensible.”
“[BlackRock] is a key member of the Partnership for New York City and is well known for its global leadership on sustainability and environmental issue,” Wylde said in the statement. “It is our hope that the pragmatic interests of the city and our public pension funds will prevail over political theater under incoming Comptroller[-Elect] Mark Levine.”
Fidelity did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Tags: BlackRock, Brad Lander, decarbonization, Fidelity, Larry Fink, Net Zero, New York City Bureau of Asset Management, New York City Employees' Retirement System (NYCERS), NYC Office of The Comptroller