Hunton Retail Law Resource

Once the sole province of hedge funds and special interest groups, many mainstream institutional investors have now also embraced a more activist perspective with regard to their portfolio companies. In his most recent letter to CEOs, Blackrock chairman Larry Fink advocated in favor of a series of Environmental-Social-Governance (“ESG”) issues and rhetorically asked companies, “What role do we play in the community?” Other institutional money managers, like New York City’s Comptroller Scott Stringer, have also accelerated their ESG-focused shareholder activism in recent years, targeting well-known retailers such as Kroger, Walmart and Home Depot in the process.