BlackRock is taking a relatively high-profile stance in backing a new Texas Stock Exchange to be launched in Dallas next year — one of only two of the exchange’s more than 24 backers cited in a TXSE Group announcement Wednesday that have allowed themselves to be identified.
“BlackRock is proud to be a founding investor in the Texas Stock Exchange to increase liquidity and improve market efficiency for BlackRock’s clients and other investors in the U.S. capital markets,” the money management giant said in a statement.
“We look forward to engaging with the other investors” — i.e., the other financial backers of the exchange alluded to in the TXSE announcement — “on the benefits of the TXSE’s unique value proposition,” the statement concluded.
Citadel Securities, the only other TXSE backer identified, declined to comment.
While the Texas Stock Exchange announcement said the backers of the coming electronic exchange “together comprise a majority of all U.S. listed retail volume,” other leading industry lights apparently weren’t rushing to stand up and be counted. Spokespeople for other big players — including Boston-based Fidelity Investments and Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price Group — said their firms aren’t involved in the venture. Still others, including J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, declined to comment.
BlackRock’s public backing of the Texas Stock Exchange comes after more than two years of high political frictions between the firm and state officials, with BlackRock — despite hundreds of billions of dollars invested in fossil-fuel-related companies globally — targeted for allegedly boycotting Texas’ oil and gas industry.
A recent example: On March 19, the $52.3 billion Texas Permanent School Fund fired BlackRock from equity mandates totaling roughly $8.5 billion to comply with the state’s anti-ESG statute.
A BlackRock spokesman, asked whether BlackRock’s TXSE investment was one means of improving the money manager’s relations with the economically powerful and fast-growing state, said there was nothing to say beyond BlackRock’s statement Wednesday.
If indeed a political element was at play, no immediate signs of a thawing were apparent.
In an emailed statement, Chris Bryan, a spokesman for Glenn Hegar, the Texas comptroller of public accounts, said that while Hegar welcomes BlackRock’s support for Texas: “This is not part of the criteria used to identify candidates for listing. BlackRock will be removed from the list of companies boycotting oil and gas as defined by Texas statute when they stop boycotting oil and gas as defined by Texas statute."