Vice President, BlackRock Investment Stewardship: Financial Services Sector Analyst

About this role

About our team:

• Investment stewardship is one of the ways in which BlackRock fulfills our fiduciary responsibilities as an asset manager to our clients. BlackRock Investment Stewardship serves as a link between our clients and the companies they invest in.
• We take a long-term approach to stewardship, focused on engaging with company boards and executive leadership to understand the drivers of risk and financial value creation in companies’ business models. Globally, the BIS team leads more than 3,700 engagement meetings with 2,600 portfolio companies annually.
• For clients who authorize us to vote on their behalf, we use voting to formally communicate our support for or concerns about how companies are serving the financial interests of our clients as long-term investors. Globally, in 2023 we voted on behalf of those clients who authorized us to do so at more than 18,000 shareholder meetings on more than 170,000 proposals.
• Our sole focus when we engage with companies or vote at shareholder meetings is to advance our clients’ financial interests. As part of our fiduciary duty to our clients, we consider it one of our responsibilities to promote sound corporate governance as an informed, engaged shareholder on their behalf.
• The BIS team of 65+ dedicated professionals bring diverse skills and life experiences to our work, with professional expertise developed in legal, financial, advisory, consulting, technology, corporate, and governance roles. We operate in ten offices across three regions – the Americas (New York, Wilmington, and San Francisco), EMEA (London) and Asia-Pacific (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney). Analysts on the Americas team are based in BlackRock’s New York office.
• BIS is proud of our global reach and local presence.  

About the position:

The BIS Investment Stewardship Professional will assist the lead proxy voting analyst covering companies in Financial Services and/or Real Estate (REITs) sectors. They will provide support on portfolio company analysis, engagement, and voting. The intention is for the person in this role to ultimately specialize in a subset of the companies in the given sector, along with various aspects of relevant policy, to support the delivery of our annual and long-term objectives. They will report to the lead sector analyst for that industry.

Key responsibilities at the Associate/Vice President level include:

• Demonstrating expertise on sector dynamics, including corporate governance and material sustainability-related practices within the financial services (including banking, insurance, capital markets, consumer finance, diversified financials) and real estate (REITs) sectors.
• Preparing for, leading, and documenting engagement meetings with portfolio companies.
• Learning and applying BIS engagement priorities, proxy voting policies, and key industry initiatives that have impact on BIS principles.
• Working with lead sector analyst(s) to implement BIS’ corporate governance policies.
• Supporting data gathering, benchmarking and reporting to support voting decisions and policy positions.
• Assisting in the preparation of position papers to facilitate issue discussion with broader BlackRock audiences.
• Collaborating across the team to identify ways to improve policy and business processes.

The tasks involved in fulfilling these responsibilities include:

• Preparing for engagement with senior representatives of portfolio companies, including crafting memos in preparation for meetings highlighting key data that will be useful in our engagement and stewardship efforts.
• Attending, documenting and leading (as needed) engagement efforts, including recording research notes to be stored and shared with select audiences across BlackRock.
• Monitoring policy developments to improve the relevance of BlackRock’s principles and guidelines.
• Participating in benchmarking analysis and modeling to contribute to leading engagement and voting practices.
• Monitoring of proxy voting workflow, to ensure all accounts are voted as intended and are in accordance with the appropriate guidelines.
• Supporting the development of BIS position papers and reporting.
• Analyzing companies’ shareholder meeting agendas and related materials in order to vote in the manner most consistent with BlackRock’s corporate governance policies and fiduciary responsibilities.
• Collaborating with client-facing and communications colleagues to ensure client reporting and client presentations meet expectations, and that client queries on corporate governance are responded to promptly and to the client’s expectations.
• Reviewing the BIS team’s output and working practices to ensur