Many prominent American investment firms have, of late, been blurring the line between sound financial management and political activism. Serving the ESG impulse, asset managers and shareholder advisory firms have been advancing agendas at corporate annual meetings that had more to do with fighting climate change and population growth than maximizing returns on investment.
That’s bad for investors, big and small.
Fortunately, according to the 2025 edition of Unleash Prosperity’s “Putting Politics Over Pensions” report, things are starting to trend back in the right direction. After years of virtue signaling and sucking up to left-wing political leaders, these firms, which are among the world’s largest, have refreshingly rediscovered the concept of old-fashioned fiduciary responsibility.
The numbers tell the story. From 2022 to 2024, opposition to ESG measures increased from 45 percent to 71 percent among the 20 largest U.S. investment firms. In the 2025 proxy season, Vanguard opposed every politically charged shareholder resolution across its non-ESG funds, supporting zero so-called “woke” proposals. BlackRock, long seen as the principal ESG evangelist thanks to its outspoken CEO Larry Fink, pulled back dramatically as well, supporting fewer than 2 percent of environmental and social resolutions.
The Unleash Prosperity report recognizes that progress has been made. BlackRock has jumped from a grade of “C” to an “A” in fiduciary performance over the past few years, and its competitor State Street also climbed two grades.
More important than the grades is what they represent: the re-emergence of financial stewardship that puts the interests of investors, especially retirees who let others manage their money, before anything else.
As an investment strategy, ESG once seemed here to stay. The so-called “sustainable” investment funds, showered with fawning media coverage, attracted hundreds of billions in assets. Now, reality has caught up. Investors pulled $19 billion out of ESG-branded funds last year, a trend that continued advancing through 2025.
The reason is simple: returns matter. Shareholders grew tired of watching asset managers prioritize activism over performance, and pension funds are especially vulnerable when politics outweighs prudence.
The 2025 proxy season saw just 224 environmental or social shareholder resolutions introduced in the United States. In 2024, it was 400. Support for left-leaning proposals plummeted to 19 percent, down from 33 percent in 2021. Even among firms once synonymous with ESG leadership, enthusiasm for ideological voting is evaporating. As the report notes, “Investors don’t want money managers steering their capital in the direction of political ideology. The objective instead is remaining faithful to their fiduciary responsibility to provide clients with the highest returns.”
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