There’s more behind the Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light controversy than one might think. Whether it’s triage to stop the bleeding hemorrhage of money from Anheuser-Busch or a desperate plea for forgiveness, one ex-top Anheuser-Busch executive explains the ‘woke’ actions behind large companies.
Anson Frericks told Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” that companies such as Anheuser-Busch and Target are faced with pressure from investment firms to push their liberal, leftwing agendas. Frericks explained that firms like New York-based BlackRock and Pennsylvania-based Vanguard are behind many of the controversial decisions made by large corporations.
Frericks, who left his job at the St. Louis-based beer titan Anheuser-Busch explained that his decision was largely due to the way much of corporate America was acting in terms of “defying public sentiment when engaging in politics.”
Specifically, money talks. Frericks explains that Vanguard, and another firm, State Street, manage about $20 trillion in capital and use their clout to promote agenda politics being pushed on them by progressive lawmakers overseeing government pension funds that the companies profit from.
One of the firms manages California’s pension fund — the largest in the country — and California politicians can have a big say in the corporate governance and politicking of the firms they invest so heavily in, he added.
“In California, for example, they recently have mandated those large pension funds that they divest from things like fossil fuels and oil and gas, and then when Bill de Blasio, [former] mayor of New York, was there, he did the same thing,” he said.
“But they also tell BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard if they’re going to manage their money, they have to commit to things like ESG — diversity, equity, inclusion — and adopt firm-wide commitments that they therefore then force onto all the major companies in corporate America.”