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BlackRock Inc. said Monday it is hiring a prominent law firm to conduct an internal investigation after a report in a trade publication outlined complaints from new employees about the behavior of managers, including senior leader Mark Wiedman.
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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in a broad statement on Monday that the company is retaining law firm Paul, Weiss to investigate the complaints and other incidents that have come to light in recent weeks.
A copy of the memo was provided to Reuters by a company spokesman and is the latest in a series of fines by the world’s largest asset manager.
BLACKROCK ‘INTRUDES’ IN OFFICE SPACES
This time, Fink responded to an article published by Institutional Investor describing a ‘bridge culture’ within BlackRock and making detailed inappropriate remarks by Wiedman, for which he apologized.
Such incidents “should not happen at BlackRock,” Fink wrote. A spokesman for Paul, Weiss, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
With about $ 8.7 billion under management, BlackRock has become one of the most influential voices calling for more boardroom diversity and minority representation in other companies whose shares it owns.
BLACKROCK MAY NEVER BE 100% OFF CORONAVIRUS STAFF OFFICE
Yet BlackRock itself has faced an increasing number of complaints from women and minority workers about their treatment.
Last month, BlackRock outlined plans to investigate the process of investigating workers’ concerns and expanding training after former employees shared racial and sexual harassment accounts on social media.
The trade publication Institutional Investor said on Monday that it had spoken to a number of current and former BlackRock employees who described how their experiences clashed with BlackRock’s rhetoric. The report describes how Wiedman, the head of international strategy and corporate strategy, made inappropriate remarks such as asking a woman in public about a choice of underwear during an employee dinner held about ten years ago.
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In a statement sent by the spokesman to Reuters and the Institutional Investor, Wiedman said: “This comment was a clumsy and wrong attempt to build camaraderie that failed miserably, and I’m sorry.
In response to the Institutional Investor article, a company spokesman said: “BlackRock is committed to building a diverse business and an inclusive culture. There are episodes that are told in this story that are appalling and that behavior of this kind should never occur at BlackRock. “