[EXCERPT FROM] LARRY FINK’S 2022 LETTER TO CEOS: The Power of Capitalism

Dear CEO,

Each year I make it a priority to write to you on behalf of BlackRock’s clients, who are shareholders in your company. The majority of our clients are investing to finance retirement. Their time horizons can span decades.

The financial security we seek to help our clients achieve is not created overnight. It is a long-term endeavor, and we take a long-term approach. That is why, for the past decade, I have written to you, as CEOs and Chairs of the companies our clients are invested in. I write these letters as a fiduciary for our clients who entrust us to manage their assets – to highlight the themes that I believe are vital to driving durable long-term returns and to helping them reach their goals.

When my partners and I founded BlackRock as a startup 34 years ago, I had no experience running a company. Over the past three decades, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with countless CEOs and to learn what distinguishes truly great companies. Time and again, what they all share is that they have a clear sense of purpose; consistent values; and, crucially, they recognize the importance of engaging with and delivering for their key stakeholders. This is the foundation of stakeholder capitalism.

Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not “woke.” It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper. This is the power of capitalism. 

[OCS: This is a bald-faced lie! As a matter of corporate governance, a corporation’s board of directors has a fiduciary duty to its owners, its shareholders. To the extent a company serves its customers, treats employees fairly, satisfies its financing sources, and benefits the community – it is all a function of yielding an acceptable return on shareholder investment. To the extent you allow others with no fiduciary duty to impact the corporation's governance is becoming extremely problematic. In many cases, stakeholder capitalism is often a euphemism for an economic system that is primarily capitalistic but accepts some degree of government control over the governance and assets to benefit the state itself, its special interests, or some social engineering purpose undertaken by the regime.]

In today’s globally interconnected world, a company must create value for and be valued by its full range of stakeholders in order to deliver long-term value for its shareholders. It is through effective stakeholder capitalism that capital is efficiently allocated, companies achieve durable profitability, and value is created and sustained over the long-term. Make no mistake, the fair pursuit of profit is still what animates markets; and long-term profitability is the measure by which markets will ultimately determine your company’s success.

[OCS: This poses a problem. To what extent does a corporation sacrifice its assets to benefit non-owners at the direction of non-fiduciaries?]

At the foundation of capitalism is the process of constant reinvention – how companies must continually evolve as the world around them changes or risk being replaced by new competitors. The pandemic has turbocharged an evolution in the operating environment for virtually every company. It’s changing how people work and how consumers buy. It’s creating new businesses and destroying others. Most notably, it’s dramatically accelerating how technology is reshaping life and business. Innovative companies looking to adapt to this environment have easier access to capital to realize their visions than ever before. And the relationship between a company, its employees, and society is being redefined.

[OCS: Notice what is missing. Yes, the pandemic has accelerated change, but it has also accelerated a malignant, out-of-control, and metastasizing government influence. A one-party-dominated government that has corporatized mainstream media as partisan propagandists and actively encouraged censorship and cancellation of platform access and access to certain critical financial and business services.]

COVID-19 has also deepened the erosion of trust in traditional institutions and exacerbated polarization in many Western societies. This polarization presents a host of new challenges for CEOs. Political activists, or the media, may politicize things your company does. They may hijack your brand to advance their own agendas. In this environment, facts themselves are frequently in dispute, but businesses have an opportunity to lead. Employees are increasingly looking to their employer as the most trusted, competent, and ethical source of information – more so than government, the media, and NGOs.

[OCS: The erosion of trust is not due to COVID-19, it is attributable to the bald-faced lies of government, the mainstream media, and other partisan actors. Those who redefine long-established concepts, perverting language, and telling you to ignore objective truth in favor of a mutable narrative. Brands cannot be hijacked if CEOs and others refuse to play the game – ignoring the most vocal of the activists who, in reality, represents an insignificant portion of your customers or population as a whole. It is a lack of courage on behalf of “go along to get along” CEOs and weak boards that prioritize their cushy jobs over their fiduciary duties and allegiance to shareholders. Commitment to your shareholders trumps self-aggrandizing leadership on behalf of partisan interests.]

That is why your voice is more important than ever. It’s never been more essential for CEOs to have a consistent voice, a clear purpose, a coherent strategy, and a long-term view. Your company’s purpose is its north star in this tumultuous environment. The stakeholders your company relies upon to deliver profits for shareholders need to hear directly from you – to be engaged and inspired by you. They don’t want to hear us, as CEOs, opine on every issue of the day, but they do need to know where we stand on the societal issues intrinsic to our companies’ long-term success.

Putting your company’s purpose at the foundation of your relationships with your stakeholders is critical to long-term success. Employees need to understand and connect with your purpose; and when they do, they can be your staunchest advocates. Customers want to see and hear what you stand for as they increasingly look to do business with companies that share their values. And shareholders need to understand the guiding principle driving your vision and mission. They will be more likely to support you in difficult moments if they have a clear understanding of your strategy and what is behind it.

A new world of work

No relationship has been changed more by the pandemic than the one between employers and employees. The quit rate in the US and the UK is at historic highs. And in the US, we are seeing some of the highest wage growth in decades. Workers seizing new opportunities is a good thing: It demonstrates their confidence in a growing economy.

[OCS: We have never seen any nation destroy its economy by incentivizing workers to stay at home by providing generous unemployment benefits that may exceed an employee’s salary at work. By demanding wage controls that see a burger-flipper earning $34,000 plus benefits because politicians are pandering to low-skill workers, often illegal aliens, with large families. This is an unwarranted mass redistribution of wealth.]

While turnover and rising pay are not a feature of every region or sector, employees across the globe are looking for more from their employer – including more flexibility and more meaningful work. As companies rebuild themselves coming out of the pandemic, CEOs face a profoundly different paradigm than we are used to. Companies expected workers to come to the office five days a week. Mental health was rarely discussed in the workplace. And wages for those on low and middle incomes barely grew.

That world is gone.

Workers demanding more from their employers is an essential feature of effective capitalism. It drives prosperity and creates a more competitive landscape for talent, pushing companies to create better, more innovative environments for their employees – actions that will help them achieve greater profits for their shareholders. Companies that deliver are reaping the rewards. Our research shows that companies who forged strong bonds with their employees have seen lower levels of turnover and higher returns through the pandemic.

[OCS: Workers are demanding more – because of the reduction in purchasing power due to inflation, and the malignant leadership of our nation is crippling our economy, destroying energy sources driving industrialization, over-taxing, and over-regulating everything that fosters a vibrant free market. Free-market capitalism is gone. We are becoming a nation of asset-poor leasees.]

Companies not adjusting to this new reality and responding to their workers do so at their own peril. Turnover drives up expenses, drives down productivity, and erodes culture and corporate memory. CEOs need to be asking themselves whether they are creating an environment that helps them compete for talent. At BlackRock we are doing the same: working with our own employees to navigate this new world of work.

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