Brad Lander
New York City Comptroller
One Centre Street
New York, NY 10007
Dear Comptroller Lander,
BlackRock is incredibly proud of our more than 30-year history serving New York City’s public-sector employees. We are honored to play a small part in helping the city’s public servants, including teachers and other Department of Education employees, municipal employees, firefighters, and police officers, retire with dignity. We do this by delivering consistent investment performance across public equities, fixed income, and private markets.
The New York City Bureau of Asset Management (NYC BAM) is staffed by a world-class investment team that is dedicated to serving the beneficiaries of New York City’s five public pension plans with the highest levels of integrity and professionalism. Over the past several months, we’ve had multiple conversations with the investment team regarding NYC BAM’s investment and decarbonization objectives. As with all of our clients, we’ve been eager to deepen our understanding of NYC BAM’s needs and collaborate on how we can best protect the retirement security of the 750,000 people who rely on the five pension plans served by NYC BAM. Our ability to serve as a fiduciary to clients around the world with a range of investment objectives has resulted in them entrusting us with more than a trillion dollars of new business over the last two years.
In response to a direct request from NYC BAM, we met with its investment team earlier this month to provide them with an update on our Climate and Decarbonization Stewardship program. This program applies to the funds and strategies our clients have chosen to invest in that have explicit climate and decarbonization investment objectives. During that meeting, we informed the investment team that a version of this program is now available to each of the five pension plans.
Today, you recommended that three pension plans take certain actions after your departure, including terminating BlackRock’s index equity mandate. In doing so, you accused BlackRock of abdicating its financial duty and putting New York City’s pensions at risk. These statements are another instance of the politicization of public pension funds, which undermines the retirement security of hardworking New Yorkers.
Any change to one of the five pension plan portfolios would be subject to a review process involving the plan’s Board, the NYC BAM investment team, and other relevant stakeholders. Should they take up your recommendation, we look forward to demonstrating the breadth and depth of our capabilities and the tremendous value we deliver to NYC BAM and 750,000 dedicated public servants. In the meantime, we remain focused on delivering returns for New York City’s public-sector employees so they can enjoy their hard-earned retirements.
BlackRock was founded in New York City, and we are proud to call it our home. We look forward to continuing to serve NYC BAM and the city’s pensions as you pursue your next career opportunity.
Sincerely,
![Signature of Armando Senra, Managing Director]()
Armando Senra
Managing Director
Head of the Americas Institutional Business
