State Officials’ Letter to Asset Managers

Dear Mr. Fink:

We write to offer a fundamentally different vision of fiduciary responsibility than the one advanced in the July 2025 letter to you from signatories of the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF).

We believe the views expressed in their letter misrepresent the true meaning of fiduciary duty and would require asset managers to take a passive approach to oversight while ignoring the nature of long-term value creation in modern capital markets. In contrast, we believe that fiduciary duty calls for active oversight, responsible governance, and the full exercise of ownership rights on behalf of the workers and retirees we serve.

Fiduciary duty, as properly understood, requires—not prohibits—investor consideration of material risks and long-horizon opportunities. Institutional investors, including public pension funds, are long-term owners. They bear the consequences of unmanaged risks—whether climate-related, governance-related, or supply chain-related—and must ensure that corporations and their boards address such risks with transparency and accountability.

Asset owners and their asset managers must retain and effectively use their authority to vote proxies, and engage companies to deliver durable, risk-adjusted financial returns over the long-term.

It is particularly unreasonable to suggest that asset owners whose portfolios span the entire economy should be barred from engaging the largest firms in the market. Today, the top 100 companies represent more than 70% of U.S. market capitalization. For many institutional investors, these holdings are structurally inescapable. Denying the right to engage with these companies is tantamount to severing ownership from stewardship.

We commend asset managers who are expanding opportunities for clients to vote proxies. We urge you to focus on empowering institutional investors and uphold an approach to fiduciary duty grounded in transparency, accountability, and long-term value creation. It is essential that you lead in developing tools and mechanisms that connect capital to oversight.

We invite you to respond by September 1, 2025, and to meet with our offices to reaffirm your current commitment to responsible stewardship and build a constructive dialogue around this issue.

List of Signatories:

Malia Cohen, California State Controller

Fiona Ma, California State Treasurer

David L. Young, Colorado State Treasurer

Erick Russell, Connecticut Treasurer

Colleen C. Davis, Delaware State Treasurer

Michael W. Frerichs, Illinois State Treasurer

Joe Perry, Maine State Treasurer

Brooke Lierman, Maryland State Comptroller

Deborah B. Goldberg, Massachusetts State Treasurer and Receiver-General

Julie Blaha, Minnesota State Auditor

Zach B. Conine, Nevada State Treasurer

Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller

Laura M. Montoya, New Mexico State Treasurer

Elizabeth Steiner, Oregon State Treasurer

James A. Diossa, Rhode Island General Treasurer

Mike Pieciak, Vermont State Treasurer

Michael J. Pellicciotti, Washington State Treasurer (signed solely in his official capacity as a state treasurer