Investment firms are to blame for woke campaigns, claims ex-AB exec trends now
A former Anheuser-Busch executive has claimed that institutional investors are pushing left-wing ideology on the companies they invest in, spurring recent controversies like the ones that engulfed Bud Light and Target.
Anson Frericks, a co-founder of Strive Asset Management who previously spent a decade at Anheuser-Busch, made the claim in an interview on Tuesday on Fox News.
'You just have to follow the money. Take a look at BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard -- they manage $20 billion worth of capital,' he said.
Frericks said a lot of the money managed by institutional investors comes from big pension funds like those of the state of California, which put ideological pressure on the money managers.
'They -- State Street, BlackRock, Vanguard -- they have to commit to ESG, diversity, equity and inclusion and adopt firm-wide commitments that they therefore then force on to all of major company in corporate America,' said Frericks.
Anson Frericks, a co-founder of Strive Asset Management who previously spent a decade at Anheuser-Busch, blamed marketing controversies on institutional investors
Shares of AB InBev and Target have both fallen more that 17% after recent controversies
According to Frericks' LinkedIn profile, he left Anheuser-Busch in April 2022.
Asked if he left the company because he witnessed pressure from institutional investors, Frericks demurred, saying: 'Not necessarily because of Anheuser-Busch, but a lot of other companies.'
In fact, institutional investors own only 5.29 percent of the outstanding shares of the brewer's Belgium-based parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev, according to NASDAQ data.
AB InBev has a complex shareholder
