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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink‘s warning about risks from climate change on investments makes a company like electric auto maker Tesla quite attractive, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday.
Fink — whose company is the biggest money manager in the world with nearly $7 trillion in client assets — used his annual letter to CEOs to sound the alarm on climate change. He also detailed BlackRock’s plans to put sustainability at the “center of our investment approach,” including everything from portfolio construction to launching new investment products that screen for fossil fuels.
“I believe in the science. But I did not write it as an environmentalist. I wrote the letter as a capitalist,” Fink told CNBC in an interview that aired Tuesday. “My job is, as a capitalist, to help prepare our clients for the redistribution of capital. And more importantly, through that is to provide them with an investment portfolio that will outperform.”
The idea of so-called ESG investing — looking at environmental, social and governance issues in the stock picking matrix — has been an emerging theme on Wall Street as clients look to put their money into companies with causes and cultures that they can believe in.
“If you’re wanting to be in Larry Fink’s dictum, you would sell GM and Ford, which aren’t doing enough versus Tesla, even though they are trying. Tesla is the ultimate Larry Fink stock,” said Cramer on “Squawk Box.”
BlackRock is among the biggest institutional owner’s of Tesla stock, with about 4.6 million shares in its funds. That’s about 2.6% of all outstanding Tesla shares.
Cramer, who had been a relative skeptic on Tesla and CEO Elon Musk, started to change his mind late last year when Cramer’s wife, Lisa, wanted to buy a Model X. The host of “Mad Money” came out as a Tesla bull last week, and said Monday, “I love sitting in a Tesla.”
Shares of Tesla have been on a tear recently, up 2% on Tuesday morning. The stock has ripped nearly 30% higher in 2020 alone, and it has more than doubled since late September on optimism around the company’s entrance into the Chinese market.
