BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Global Advisors are the world’s three largest asset managers, collectively representing over $16 trillion in AUM, including 81% of all ETF assets. These “Big Three” investors collectively own an immense, mostly passive stake in every public US company, generating enormous interest in their annual statements of priorities and related proxy voting policies.

In the future, we will likely look back at 2020 as the year the “Big Three” got serious about sustainability. BlackRock took the initiative in January when the annual letter from CEO Larry Fink, this year titled “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance,” demanded companies provide more detailed reports relating to environmental and social issue oversight with Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) disclosures.