Headlines
Dutch fund PFZW reduces BlackRock ties over clash on sustainability
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on September 3, 2025
3 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on September 3, 2025
3 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
PFZW reduces BlackRock investments due to sustainability voting concerns, reflecting a strategic shift towards active management.
By Bart H. Meijer and Simon Jessop
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) -Dutch pension fund PFZW has stopped investing in stock funds managed by BlackRock, in part because of concerns over the U.S. firm's voting record on sustainability issues, its lead asset manager PGGM said on Wednesday.
The move comes amid a wider activist campaign in the Netherlands to push the country's large pension schemes to drop managers that have reduced support for climate change-linked resolutions at company meetings.
While some companies have scaled back the importance they attach to sustainability since the re-election of U.S. President Donald Trump, many of the biggest Dutch pension funds still consider it the best long-term approach.
As of March 31, BlackRock managed around 14.5 billion euros ($16.98 billion) for PFZW but now oversaw a smaller, unspecified amount of the fund's money market investments, PFZW spokesperson Ellen Habermehl told Reuters.
"It is getting harder to align with American investment managers on voting," a spokesperson for PGGM, said, adding it still works with U.S. managers like Acadian and MAN Numeric, which manage part of the PFZW listed-equity portfolio.
While PFZW already chose how to vote, it was keen to ensure it was in line with those managing its money, Sander van Stijn, Head of Mandate Management at PGGM, said in an interview with Dutch newspaper NRC. "Otherwise things get very complicated".
BlackRock said it supported 2% of shareholders' environmental and social proposals in 2025, down from 4% in 2024, noting the reason for the drop was that many were overly prescriptive or lacked economic merit.
In June, U.S. asset owner the Sierra Club Foundation said it would move $10.5 million in assets because BlackRock had not pressed portfolio companies enough on climate.
In response to the PFZW move, a BlackRock spokesperson said: "BlackRock clients – including our Dutch clients - continue to invest through BlackRock to meet their sustainable investing goals, entrusting us to manage over $1 trillion in sustainable and transition assets on their behalf."
Some clients could also decide how to vote on their shares, they added.
As part of the strategic shift, PFZW, the Netherlands' second-largest pension fund, said it stopped investing its 50 billion euros in stock market investments passively, to allow it to buy and sell more easily.
The move had resulted in it selling out of 2,600 companies and selecting just 756 to invest in, it said.
"For the next five years, we aim for a better balance between our need for good returns, acceptable risks and sustainability," PFZW's Habermehl said.
($1 = 0.8542 euros)
(Reporting by Bart Meijer; editing by Barbara Lewis, Alexandra Hudson)
PFZW ceased investments in BlackRock's stock funds due to concerns about the firm's voting record on sustainability issues.
As of March 31, BlackRock managed approximately 14.5 billion euros ($16.98 billion) for PFZW.
BlackRock supported 2% of shareholders' environmental and social proposals in 2025, down from 4% in 2024, citing that many proposals were overly prescriptive or lacked economic justification.
PFZW aims for a better balance between good returns, acceptable risks, and sustainability over the next five years.
The strategic shift led PFZW to sell out of 2,600 companies and select only 756 for investment.
Explore more articles in the Headlines category
