{"id":61902,"date":"2025-12-05T16:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/61902\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T16:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T16:01:10","slug":"state-street-still-using-dei-to-curry-favor-with-leftist-state-officials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/61902\/","title":{"rendered":"State Street still using DEI to curry favor with leftist state officials"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woke investing has faced a clampdown on Wall Street<\/a>, but if its\u00a0critics are to be believed State Street \u2013 one of the biggest asset managers in the US \u2013 is still using it to curry favor with leftist state and local officials who control hundreds of billions of dollars in pension money, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n

State Street\u2019s work involving controversial Diversity Equity and Inclusion and green energy policies \u2014 where it facilitates woke shareholder votes on behalf of some of its big, public pension clients \u2014 has sparked chatter on Wall Street and Washington following New York City Comptroller Brad Lander\u2019s move last month to block rival BlackRock as a manager of the city\u2019s pension fund<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a recent posting on X,\u00a0 Alabama GOP senator Tommy Tuberville said State Street, which manages $8 billion in city pension money overseen by Lander, is \u201calready caving to the WOKE Mamdani climate agenda before he has even taken office.\u201d Lander is a key supporter of the socialist New York City mayor elect Zohran Mandani<\/a>, who himself supports policies such as DEI and green energy.<\/p>\n

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander\u2019s has sought to block State Street rival BlackRock as a manager of the city\u2019s pension fund.\u00a0 Jack Forbes \/ NY Post Design<\/p>\n

For its part, State Street says it\u2019s getting a bad rap \u2014 and it has some strong evidence suggesting as much. The bank offers nearly a dozen such proxy-voting frameworks for\u00a0pension funds, including those that appeal to Red State public officials\u00a0that steer clear of anything woke.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t engage directly with US companies to push stuff like Diversity\u00a0Equity and Inclusion employment policies or green energy. Rather it facilitates shareholder votes on these measures for progressive pension-fund clients, people like Lander \u2014 the fiduciary of the city retirement funds \u2014 during what\u2019s known as \u201cproxy season,\u201d when big investors get to vote on corporate governance proposals.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Gasparino<\/p>\n

Yet the controversy is real.\u00a0Lander isn\u2019t looking to ditch BlackRock \u2013 headed by investing prodigy Larry Fink \u2013 because it has done a bad job managing the retirement funds of the city\u2019s firemen, teachers and police. Rather, Lander\u2019s beef is that BlackRock has gone non-woke in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After fully\u00a0embracing corporate\u00a0government policies like\u00a0Environment\u00a0Social Governance investing, the big asset manager no longer demands strict adherence to so-called carbon-neutral edicts, meaning it won\u2019t force ExxonMobil to invest in windmills versus drilling. It also won\u2019t demand strict gender and racial preferences in appointing board members.<\/p>\n

Lander\u2019s beef is that Larry Fink\u2019s BlackRock has gone non-woke in recent years.\u00a0 Getty Images<\/p>\n

State Street, meanwhile, offers something known as the\u00a0\u201cSustainability Stewardship Service Proxy Voting and Engagement Policy.\u201d\u00a0 The policy,\u00a0reviewed by The Post, dictates how the firm will push proxy or shareholder votes on shares it holds for its woke clients on a range of corporate governance edicts, including those, critics say, that are on dubious legal grounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those include \u201cprogress made against deforestation- and other land use-related targets and commitments\u201d and whether portfolio companies \u201cregularly identify whether there are risks related to human rights in their operations and value chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most controversial, critics say, are the firm\u2019s \u201cDiversity\u201d standards, which hold that \u201cEffective board oversight of a company\u2019s long-term business strategy necessitates gender diversity, and the level of such diversity depends on various factors including culture and progress made.\u201d The standards also require board-level \u201cracial\/ethnic diversity in select markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

State Street say there is nothing improper about how it handles DEI and other progressive shareholder votes because it\u2019s doing so at the behest of their clients, like Lander. REUTERS<\/p>\n

State Street\u2019s moves appear to run counter to the recent corporate shift away from DEI. Most large companies, even such diversity stalwarts as JPMorgan and BlackRock, have sought to roll back strict adherence to\u00a0DEI\u00a0in hiring and in business dealings \u2013 including asset management.<\/p>\n

Trump later doubled down on ending DEI<\/a>, issuing an executive order that \u201cdirects all departments and agencies to take strong action to end private sector DEI discrimination, including civil compliance investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Press officials from State Street say there is nothing improper about how it handles DEI and other progressive shareholder votes because it\u2019s doing so at the behest of their clients, like Lander, when they demand it. It also facilitates\u00a0votes for conservative public officials who run pension assets in Middle America and the south.<\/p>\n

Lander and NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in June. REUTERS<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sustainability policy that you\u2019re referencing is a policy that our clients can choose or not choose \u2026 our voting and engagement policies and practices comply with US law,\u201d wrote spokesman Mark LaVoie. He declined to comment on Tuberville\u2019s social-media commentary.<\/p>\n

Officials at rival banks suggest otherwise. \u201cWhat they\u2019re essentially doing is laying such mandates on clients that they are enforcing on their portfolio companies,\u201d said a senior executive at a major money management firm.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up to receive On The Money by Charlie Gasparino in your inbox every Thursday.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThanks for signing up!\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

State Street said it recently\u00a0revamped its policies on such matters to alert clients it won\u2019t discuss with US portfolio companies such\u00a0hot-button issues as DEI and sustainability. <\/p>\n

One reason is that it is also a federal government contractor, one of the primary targets of Trump\u2019s executive orders ending DEI on both the federal level and in the private sector. It manages a 25% chunk of the so-called \u201cThrift Savings Plan,\u201d a $1 billion retirement fund for federal government employees.<\/p>\n

A White House spokesman had no comment on State Street\u2019s DEI activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woke investing has faced a clampdown on Wall Street, but if its\u00a0critics are to be believed State Street…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[288,17446,18523,9,11,10,49,51,50,11323,240,87,3417],"class_list":{"0":"post-61902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-dei","10":"tag-investments","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-new-york-state","15":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","16":"tag-new-york-state-news","17":"tag-on-the-money","18":"tag-pensions","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-wall-street"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}