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As CEO Larry Fink steps up scrutiny of the fund group’s corporate governance, BlackRock has the largest number of company directors in the U.S. technology industry on the board.
The world’s largest wealth manager voted in regulatory filings in late August against the reappointment of Sanford Robertson to the board of Salesforce, where he chairs the US software company’s governance committee.
Blackrock Robertson, founding partner of technology-focused private equity firm Francisco Partners, said: “It’s to blame. [a] Lack of Freedom” on the Salesforce board. It’s the first time BlackRock has voted against Robertson in three years.
He voted against Twitter board director Egon Durban, who sits on seven public company boards. Durban, CEO of venture investor Silver Lake, lost a vote to stay on Twitter in May, but said he would remain on the board if the company cut two of the other positions.
The move to “increase overboard” is part of a broader push under Fink to improve the corporate governance of investee companies.
However, BlackRock’s stance differs from that of rival asset manager Vanguard, which backed Robertson and Durban to highlight the different approaches investors take to board composition.
Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, said BlackRock bills itself as “changing the world for the better,” while Vanguard “always sells itself as low-cost.”
For three years in a row, BlackRock voted against Alphabet board member Anne Mather, a former chief financial officer at animation studio Pixar, because she sat on “excessive” boards, the asset manager said.
Under fire at BlackRock, Fidelity changed its board rules this year to prevent members from serving on more than five boards, including its own. Mather left the rental company Airbnb and the computer networking company Arista Networks, but BlackRock still boycotted Alphabet’s June annual meeting. A spokeswoman for Alphabet declined to comment.
Amazon has also come under scrutiny. BlackRock voted against Judith McGrath on Amazon’s board, saying, “She didn’t show up.” [an] ability to effectively represent the interests of shareholders.” This is the first time in three years that BlackRock has challenged McGrath, the former chairman and CEO of MTV.
The dissenting votes represent a rare rebuke of BlackRock, which has the support of more than 92 percent of all board members in the U.S. from July 2021 to the end of June this year. The fund group has previously said it wants people to serve on no more than four corporate boards. A BlackRock spokesman declined to comment.
Vanguard said it generally votes on people who serve on more than four public company boards, although it noted that there may be exceptions. “We take a case-by-case approach to evaluating potential over-boarding situations,” Vanguard said.
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