FOR the first time in at least 3 1/2 years, BlackRock has seen clients withdraw more cash from its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds in Europe than they allocated amid an apparent retreat from passive strategies, according to a fresh analysis by Morningstar Direct.
Investors with the world’s largest asset manager pulled US$2.2 billion, net, from European-domiciled sustainable open-ended and exchange-traded funds, according to third-quarter data compiled for Bloomberg by Morningstar. The market researcher, whose calculations are based on its own definition of sustainable, provided data going back 14 quarters, when Europe enforced its investing rulebook for ESG disclosures.
“This is surprising given that BlackRock has been at the top of ESG fund-flow league tables every quarter for at least the past five years,” said Hortense Bioy, head of sustainable investing research at Morningstar Sustainalytics. “It’s even more surprising that the outflows came from its passive fund range, which has always proven popular among investors.”
A spokesperson for BlackRock said that globally, the asset manager’s sustainable fund flows for the third quarter were positive. In fact, when including institutional mandates, BlackRock saw inflows in Europe of more than US$25 billion, so the momentum “is strong”, the spokesperson noted.
The Morningstar data, which are limited to mutual funds bought by retail and institutional investors, also show that flows into Europe’s index-tracking ESG funds fell to a record low of US$10 billion at the end of September.
After years of pushback against ESG in the US – with BlackRock chief executive officer Larry Fink famously bemoaning the label’s weaponisation – the Morningstar data suggest the investing strategy is also bumping up against resistance in Europe.
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The region, which sits on more than 80 per cent of the world’s ESG fund assets, saw net fund inflows across asset managers drop more than 7 per cent last quarter, Morningstar estimates.
Investors are trying to navigate a cocktail of market-lagging returns combined with a continually evolving regulatory environment. That includes product-naming rules being enforced by the European Securities and Markets Authority, which Morningstar says could force thousands of ESG funds to either dump assets or find a new name.
BlackRock funds affected by outflows last quarter include clean-energy strategies, according to Bioy. BlackRock’s ESG-enhanced series of exchange-traded funds, which use the EU’s climate-transition benchmark, were also hit, she said.
“Whether or not this is the beginning of a new era for the firm marked by outflows, or more volatile flows in this corner of the market, remains to be seen,” Bioy noted. “It might be too early to say anything definitive at this point.
Across the wider fund industry, there are still flows into products tracking climate-transition benchmarks, “although these have been smaller this year than in the previous three years”, Bioy pointed out.
Meanwhile, a Bloomberg analysis of ESG equity funds found they are continuing to underperform the wider market, having returned 15 per cent on average this year, compared with 19 per cent for the MSCI World Index. And ESG funds’ organic growth rate – defined as net flows relative to total assets – was 0.33 per cent last quarter, compared with 0.77 per cent for the wider market, according to Morningstar.
At BlackRock, clients pulled more than US$2.4 billion from its passive opened-ended funds and ETFs last quarter, Morningstar said. They withdrew a further US$700 million from its iShares passive exchange traded funds, while its active funds drew US$930 million, the researcher’s data show.
The development means BlackRock is no longer among the 10 asset managers operating in Europe with the biggest quarterly ESG inflows, though it remains the region’s biggest ESG investment firm overall, Morningstar estimates.
The spokesperson for BlackRock said that when taking institutional mandates into account, the asset manager’s “sustainable platform crossed US$1 trillion” of assets under management at the end of September, “as the breadth of our platform continues to resonate with clients in helping them meet their goals”. BLOOMBERG
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Publish date : 2024-11-03 21:01:00
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