Dutch fund PFZW reduces BlackRock ties over clash on sustainability

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By Bart H. Meijer and Simon Jessop

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch pension fund PFZW has stopped investing in stock funds managed by BlackRock, in part because of concerns over the U.S. firm’s voting record on sustainability issues, its lead asset manager PGGM said on Wednesday.

The move comes amid a wider activist campaign in the Netherlands to push the country’s large pension schemes to drop managers that have reduced support for climate change-linked resolutions at company meetings.

While some companies have scaled back the importance they attach to sustainability since the re-election of U.S. President Donald Trump, many of the biggest Dutch pension funds still consider it the best long-term approach.

As of March 31, BlackRock managed around 14.5 billion euros ($16.98 billion) for PFZW but now oversaw a smaller, unspecified amount of the fund’s money market investments, PFZW spokesperson Ellen Habermehl told Reuters.

“It is getting harder to align with American investment managers on voting,” a spokesperson for PGGM, said, adding it still works with U.S. managers like Acadian and MAN Numeric, which manage part of the PFZW listed-equity portfolio.

While PFZW already chose how to vote, it was keen to ensure it was in line with those managing its money, Sander van Stijn, Head of Mandate Management at PGGM, said in an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC. “Otherwise things get very complicated”.

BlackRock said it supported 2% of shareholders’ environmental and social proposals in 2025, down from 4% in 2024, noting the reason for the drop was that many were overly prescriptive or lacked economic merit.

In June, U.S. asset owner the Sierra Club Foundation said it would move $10.5 million in assets because BlackRock had not pressed portfolio companies enough on climate.

In response to the PFZW move, a BlackRock spokesperson said: “BlackRock clients – including our Dutch clients – continue to invest through BlackRock to meet their sustainable investing goals, entrusting us to manage over $1 trillion in sustainable and transition assets on their behalf.”

Some clients could also decide how to vote on their shares, they added.

As part of the strategic shift, PFZW, the Netherlands’ second-largest pension fund, said it stopped investing its 50 billion euros in stock market investments passively, to allow it to buy and sell more easily.

The move had resulted in it selling out of 2,600 companies and selecting just 756 to invest in, it said.

“For the next five years, we aim for a better balance between our need for good returns, acceptable risks and sustainability,” PFZW’s Habermehl said.

($1 = 0.8542 euros)

(Reporting by Bart Meijer; editing by Barbara Lewis, Alexandra Hudson)