The PM Must Blacklist BlackRock For Planned Infrastructure Investment Summit, March 2025

The NZHerald revealed on Friday 6th December that the Government is planning to invite BlackRock to an infrastructure investment summit in Auckland March 2025.

The Government should cancel BlackRock’s invitation, i.e. blacklist BlackRock.

The overall aim of the Infrastructure Investment Summit, according to the Herald, is to deal with NZ’s “productivity disease”. Based on BlackRock’s hugely destructive impact on the solar industry in New Zealand, BlackRock will only destroy productivity, not improve it.

On Tuesday 26th November BlackRock liquidated SolarZero, which represents 40% of the residential solar market over the past year. Over 160 staff were asked to leave the building immediately. Holiday pay, notice period and contractors have not been paid. Over 250 families have been impacted. One month before Christmas and with no prospect of finding jobs until February, over 160 SolarZero workers have been thrown onto the street. Staff and contractors are owed over $4m by BlackRock, a multi trillion dollar company that made NZD10b in profits last year.

The solar industry has been thrown into disarray because BlackRock has liquidated the industry’s largest company. The shockwaves are reverberating around the whole industry especially through the small business community that contracted to SolarZero.

BlackRock has not yet given an adequate explanation for the liquidation.

As well as uninviting BlackRock, the Prime Minister should call on Larry Fink, BlackRock’s CEO, to do the right thing for SolarZero employees. The Prime Minister is said to talk up his relationship with Larry Fink. It’s time for Christopher Luxon to show some leadership and use his famed relationship with Larry to support kiwi businesses, in this case SolarZero’s contractors, and workers.

What SolarZero staff are seeking is for BlackRock to pay; holiday pay, notice period and contractors.

The way businesses and staff have been treated by BlackRock is appalling. New Zealanders do not want this kind of capricious, unpredictable and destructive fund manager investing in our infrastructure. As the SolarZero-BlackRock saga shows, having BlackRock invest in infrastructure will result in chaos, not an increase in productivity.

Eric Pyle, formerly SolarZero employee

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