- Funds prohibited in Texas invested $5 billion in fossil fuels
- Texas’s list of funds that boycott has gotten little scrutiny
Texas bars its public pensions from investing in 350 funds run by asset-management giants such as BlackRock Inc. and Invesco Ltd. because a key Republican state official says they “boycott” the oil and gas industries.
But a Bloomberg News analysis found that the 72 BlackRock funds on the prohibited list have invested more than $2 billion in the oil industry, while an Invesco fund allocates about 20% to oil and natural gas companies, some of which are also Texas-based. The TIAA-CREF Social Choice International Equity Fund has a nearly 5% allocation to fossil fuels.
Altogether, almost half the funds on the boycotters list have invested a combined $5 billion directly in the oil and gas industry. And two thirds of the now banned funds have more than $13 billion invested in Texas-based companies, including Tesla Inc. and Waste Management Inc.
Bloomberg Politics
By Amanda Albright, Mathieu Benhamou, and Saijel Kishan
January 10, 2024