BlackRock CEO Larry Fink suggests that corporations should make a positive contribution to society apart from boosting the bottomline.

Olivia London

2018-01-09 08:33:00 Tue ET

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink emphasizes his key conviction that public corporations should make a positive contribution to society apart from boosting the bottomline. Society now demands that each public or private company serves a social purpose. To prosper over time, each company must not only deliver financial performance, but each company must also demonstrate how it makes a positive contribution to society. This kind reminder is a major watershed moment on Wall Street and raises questions about the unique nature of capitalism.

The Fink letter serves as a key lightning rod of stakeholder-value maximization for institutional investors such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Allianz, State Street, PIMCO, PGIM, and so on. Key stakeholders include not only shareholders but also employees, customers, creditors, suppliers, regulators, and intellectual property assignees.

The government may fail to prepare for the future generations on socioeconomic issues such as retirement, infrastructure, automation, and education. As a result, society has to increasingly rely on the private sector in order to better respond to broader societal challenges. If a company cannot engage with the community with a crystal-clear sense of social purpose, the company ultimately loses its license to operate for better stakeholder value. For instance, some institutional investors and activist shareholders require Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to consider the detrimental effects of mobile devices on children. Mutual funds and insurance firms such as AIG and Berkshire Hathaway can monitor whether energy companies such as ExxonMobil, BP, Phillips 66, and Saudi Aramco help mitigate environmental degradation. Also, key billionaires join the Giving Pledge campaign to curb global economic inequality. For instance, the Gates Foundation continues to help eradicate preventable diseases due to malaria, polio, Guinea worm, and smallpox in Africa and the Middle East. Nowadays, each company has to serve a social purpose in order to attract capital flows from asset management firms.

 


If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.

Blog+More

Income and wealth concentration follows the ebbs and flows of the business cycle in America.

Amy Hamilton

2019-04-23 19:45:00 Tuesday ET

Income and wealth concentration follows the ebbs and flows of the business cycle in America.

Income and wealth concentration follows the ebbs and flows of the business cycle in America. Economic inequality not only grows among people, but it also gr

+See More

Citron Research short-sellers initiate a class-action lawsuit against Tesla and its executive chairman Elon Musk.

Monica McNeil

2018-09-05 08:34:00 Wednesday ET

Citron Research short-sellers initiate a class-action lawsuit against Tesla and its executive chairman Elon Musk.

Citron Research short-sellers initiate a class-action lawsuit against Tesla and its executive chairman Elon Musk because he might have deliberately orchestr

+See More

Top money managers George Soros and Warren Buffett reveal their current stock and bond positions.

Dan Rochefort

2018-05-10 07:37:00 Thursday ET

Top money managers George Soros and Warren Buffett reveal their current stock and bond positions.

Top money managers George Soros and Warren Buffett reveal their current stock and bond positions in their recent corporate disclosures as of mid-2018. Georg

+See More

President Trump warns Google, Facebook, and Twitter that these tech titans now tread on troublesome territory.

Daphne Basel

2018-08-25 12:33:00 Saturday ET

President Trump warns Google, Facebook, and Twitter that these tech titans now tread on troublesome territory.

President Trump warns Google, Facebook, and Twitter that these tech titans now tread on troublesome territory. Specifically, Trump accuses Google of rigging

+See More

It can be practical for the U.S. to impose the 2% Warren wealth tax on the rich.

Dan Rochefort

2019-02-03 13:39:00 Sunday ET

It can be practical for the U.S. to impose the 2% Warren wealth tax on the rich.

It can be practical for the U.S. to impose the 2% wealth tax on the rich. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren proposes a 2% wealth tax on the richest Americ

+See More

U.S. trading partners such as the European Union, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and Russia voice their concern at the WTO.

James Campbell

2018-07-05 13:40:00 Thursday ET

U.S. trading partners such as the European Union, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and Russia voice their concern at the WTO.

U.S. trading partners such as the European Union, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, and Russia voice their concern at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in ligh

+See More