Yearly Archives: 2024

1. For the past four years, America’s coal producers have been responding not to the price signals of the free market, but to the commands of Larry Fink, BlackRock’s Chairman and CEO, and his fellow asset managers. As demand for the electricity Americans need to heat their homes and power their businesses has gone up, the supply of the coal used to generate that electricity has been artificially depressed—and the price has skyrocketed. Defendants have reaped the rewards of higher returns, higher fees, and higher profits, while American consumers have paid the price in higher utility bills and higher costs.

2. Over a century ago, Congress enacted Section 7 of the Clayton Act to prohibit any acquisition of stock where “the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition.” 15 U.S.C. § 18. Congress recognized that when an investor brings “under one control the competing companies whose stock it has thus acquired,” it achieves what is in substance a mere “incorporated form of the old-fashioned trust.” H.Rep. No. 627, 63rd Cong., Second Sess., at 17 (May 6, 1914). Such anticompetitive ownership blocks are “an abomination,” and the federal antitrust laws absolutely prohibit them. Id.

3. Defendants are three of the largest institutional investors in the world. Each Defendant has individually acquired substantial stockholdings in every significant publicly held coal producer in the United States. Each has thereby acquired the power to influence the policies of these competing companies and bring about a substantial lessening of competition in the markets for coal. And each has used its power to affect a substantial reduction in competition in coal markets. Considered alone and in isolation, each Defendant’s acquisition and use of shareholdings in the domestic coal producers has violated Section 7 of the Clayton Act.