An 'anti-woke' investment fund, has raised US$20mln from investors including billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman to back companies that focus only on their business and do not take any ideological stands.
Strive has been launched by 36-year-old US entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who said the fund's approach was based on the idea of “excellence capitalism”, investing in companies that look to maximise profits and eschew anything else.
“We will tell oil companies to be excellent oil companies and coal companies to be excellent coal companies and solar companies to be excellent solar companies,” Ramaswamy told the Wall Street Journal.
He said an “ideological cartel” had been formed by BlackRock and peers such as Vanguard and State Street, that was driving companies to focus on other issues that were not their core profit-making purpose.
The launch came at the same time that BlackRock said that some shareholder climate resolutions had become too prescriptive.