Woke corporate governance often stems from involved investment firms: Former Anheuser-Busch exec

Woke corporate governance, which recently led to the fiscal hemorrhaging of Anheuser-Busch and Target, often begins with investment firms pressuring them to behave in certain ways, a former executive at the beer conglomerate said.

Anson Frericks told "Jesse Watters Primetime" a lot of the lead-up to decisions — such as the one at his former firm involving transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney that led to a nationwide boycott of Bud Light — stem from the politicking of firms like New York-based BlackRock and Pennsylvania-based Vanguard.

Altogether, BlackRock, Vanguard and another firm, State Street, manage about $20 trillion in capital, Frericks said, noting it is not truly "their" money but that of the investments of Americans' mutual funds and state pension funds.

Frericks said in the case of one of the firms, it manages California's pension fund — the largest in the country — and that therefore California politicians can also have a say in the corporate governance and politicking of the firms they invest so heavily in.

"In California, for example, they recently have mandated those large pension funds that they divest from things like fossil fuels and oil and gas, and then when Bill de Blasio, [former] mayor of New York, was there, he did the same thing," he said.

"But they also tell BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard if they're going to manage their money, they have to commit to things like ESG — diversity, equity, inclusion — and adopt firm-wide commitments that they therefore then force onto all the major companies in corporate America."

Frericks said he left his post at the St. Louis beer manufacturer in part because of the way much of corporate America was acting in terms of defying public sentiment when engaging in politics.

He pointed to Atlanta, home to Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines, which became outraged after Georgia's legislators passed election integrity laws.... (Read more)

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