This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission issued an unusual warning this week to the country’s largest asset managers and a climate-focused investor group over their roles in a 2021 campaign that replaced board directors at ExxonMobil.

The commission published a letter saying it had concluded a probe into the entities, and while it found no evidence of violations, it expressed “serious concerns” about their actions.

Investor advocates and some former SEC staff say the letter clearly aims to suppress shareholder advocacy on climate change and pressure large asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, each of which were named in the letter, to steer clear of the topic entirely.

It is only the latest move by the SEC this year to limit investors’ ability to address climate risks and engage with corporate boards more broadly. The Trump administration and Republican officials across the country have spent years clamping down on efforts to press corporations for climate action.

In 2022, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives opened an antitrust investigation into some of the same groups, accusing them of acting like a “cartel.” More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general also launched probes. Oil industry campaign contributions have gone overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.

Mika Morse, who was a policy counsel on climate risk to former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, said many investors and asset managers view climate change as a significant risk to their portfolios and feel a fiduciary duty to engage with companies on the topic, but may now hesitate to continue that work.

“This is just part of this pressure campaign to ensure that the financial system doesn’t take climate into account.”

“Investors are feeling really inhibited because of this fear that they will become the target of investigations,” Morse said. “And this type of harassment is really effective, unfortunately.”

SEC Enforcement Director David Woodcock, who began that position in May, was an attorney at Exxon during the investors’ campaign, according to his LinkedIn profile. An SEC........

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