People enter BlackRock Inc. headquarters in New York, U.S. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg
BlackRock Inc., the world's largest asset manager, plans to start two exchange-traded funds that will exclude civilian firearm makers and large sellers in the wake of the Florida high school shooting.
The iShares MSCI USA Small-Cap ESG Optimized ETF, which will start trading on or about April 12, will track investment results of an index that is mostly made up of small-cap U.S. companies, according to a company release Thursday. BlackRock also filed an initial registration statement for the iShares ESG US Aggregate Bond ETF. Both ETFs will exclude producers and big retailers of civilian firearms.
The response by New York-based BlackRock comes after 17 people were shot dead at a Florida high school in February. The shooting has reignited the debate around gun control and background checks to prevent future tragedies.
Vanguard Group, the second biggest U.S. provider of ETFs, does not offer a gun-free ETF. The firm does have a mutual fund, Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund, which excludes gun manufacturers, spokesman John Woerth wrote in an email.
"It remains to be seen how significant these firearm-free instruments grow in size," said Rommel T. Dionisio, managing director of equity research at Aegis Capital Corp. "But given the recent rhetoric from various state pension funds to divest firearm companies from their portfolios, there could certainly be some selling pressure if these funds were to divest BlackRock's existing funds in favor of these new instruments which contain no firearm-related stocks."
