JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — At this morning’s meeting of the Missouri State Employee’s Retirement System (MOSERS) Board of Trustees Investment Committee, Missouri State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick and committee members began working to develop a proxy voting policy intended to protect Missouri State Employee retirement funds. This follows a commitment at the June Board meeting to abstain from proxy voting until this policy is developed and approved by the Board.
“As Treasurer, I am fighting to protect Missouri tax dollars—and I am putting my words into action,” Treasurer Fitzpatrick said. “The three largest asset managers in the United States control $20 trillion in assets. We should not allow asset managers such as Blackrock, who have demonstrated they will prioritize advancing a woke political agenda above the financial interests of their customers, to continue speaking on behalf of the state of Missouri, its taxpayers, and its pensioners. It is past time that all investors recognize the massive fiduciary breach that is taking place before our eyes, and do something about it. As Treasurer and as a member of the MOSERS Board, I will continue fighting for Missourians to stop their tax dollars from being weaponized against them.”
During June’s MOSERS Board of Trustees meeting, Treasurer Fitzpatrick called on Board members to protect Missouri State Employee retirement funds from being used by activist investment managers to advance left-wing social and political causes which are harmful to shareholders and violate their fiduciary obligations to Missourians. The board voted to take MOSERS voting power away from asset managers, including Blackrock, Inc. The MOSERS Board Investment Committee will develop a proxy voting policy to be presented to the full board for approval. Until this policy is considered and approved by the Board, MOSERS staff will abstain from voting those proxies.
Proxy voting allows shareholders in companies to e weigh-in on issues facing publicly traded companies and vote in elections for board members. Proxy voting power has historically been delegated to asset management firms who hold stock in companies on behalf of MOSERS, and millions of other investors, with the expectation that those firms would exercise those votes with their fiduciary obligation to maximize value for the retirement system and its beneficiaries as the sole consideration.
However, over the past several years, large asset managers such as Blackrock have begun to exercise the immense power they have amassed, by virtue of speaking on behalf of the customers whose money they are investing, to sacrifice return on investment for their customers to advance fringe political issues.