When your first spotlight vanishes from Google, you write it again and add more receipts.

When A Spotlight Vanishes

Back in June TCAP ran a piece on State Street’s role in Cummins world. For reasons no one has bothered to explain, that article quietly fell out of Google’s index.

The page is live. The URL works. The blog is fine. But the search engine that can surface a decade-old Cummins puff piece in a millisecond suddenly forgot a fresh critique of one of Cummins biggest shareholders.

So we will do this the old fashioned way. Write it again. Correct a few details. Add the new filings and recent fines. And this time if the search gods decide to “forget” it, at least we know exactly what they are trying to bury.

Who Owns What Now

State Street Corp is not some bloke with a trading app. It is one of the world’s biggest asset managers and custodians, sitting on trillions of client money and quietly owning chunks of almost every large listed company you can think of.

As of the latest SEC filing, State Street has just increased its stake in Cummins. It now holds around 6.54 million shares, roughly 4.75% of Cummins, after buying an extra 92,073 shares in the most recent reported quarter. That stake is worth about 2.14 billion dollars at current prices.

That is not a side hustle. That is a serious ticket on the Cummins ride from “record emissions penalty” to “Destination Zero” brochures and back again.

The earlier TCAP piece had the right picture – a big, sticky State Street stake in a diesel giant – but the numbers have moved up, not down. Whatever State Street has seen since June has not scared it off. If anything it is leaning in.

A Custodian With A Rap Sheet

State Street likes to describe itself as a trusted steward of other people’s capital. The enforcement record tells a different story.

In 2024 the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a 7.45 million dollar settlement with State Street Bank and its tech arm Charles River for 38 apparent breaches of Ukraine and Russia related sanctions. The case involved fun little details like re-issuing invoices to help clients linked to sanctioned Russian banks get round debt restrictions. This is the outfit quietly sitting on nearly five per cent of Cummins.

Roll back a few years and you get the 115 million dollar criminal penalty and deferred prosecution agreement after US prosecutors said State Street had been secretly overcharging custody clients for back-office expenses. Translation: skim a bit off the top of the people you are supposed to be safeguarding until the Department of Justice notices. Then write a cheque and promise to be better.

This is not one stray incident. It is a pattern. State Street has treated fines and settlements as part of the business model. Compliance as a line item, not a principle.

Steward Of What Exactly

On paper State Street is also a champion of responsible investment and stewardship. It turns up in ESG brochures with photos of windswept grass and women in hard hats. It runs engagement programmes. It launches things called Sustainability Stewardship Services.

In practice, when real shareholder resolutions land on the ballot about climate, human rights or worker treatment, State Street is usually standing in the “no thanks” queue.

ShareAction’s latest voting report shows support for environmental and social resolutions crashing to new lows, with the big US managers – BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard and friends – backing only a sliver of proposals. Those four between them backed about seven per cent of ESG resolutions in 2024. That is not stewardship. That is obstruction with nicer language.

The same State Street that launches a glossy sustainability voting service for clients is the State Street that has been voting against the dull, necessary resolutions which might actually change anything inside companies like Cummins.

Why Doubling Down On Cummins Matters

So put this together.

You have a diesel manufacturer that has:

run emissions defeat devices on almost a million Ram trucks and taken a record Clean Air Act penalty;
spent 2025 quietly moving towards a 1.6 million dollar shareholder settlement over defeat-device disclosures, while still claiming there was “no bad faith”;
kept pushing data-centre diesel, mining engines and off-highway kit under a coat of hydrogen paint and remembrance selfies.

And you have a global custodian that has:

paid criminal and civil penalties for cheating its own clients;
cut sanctions compliance corners until OFAC came knocking;
helped drive ESG voting support into the floor while selling itself as a responsible owner.

The second has just bought more of the first. That is not an accident. That is capital looking at Cummins full history and deciding the risk is priced in, the fines are behind it and the future profits from burning things (with a bit of hydrogen garnish) are worth backing.

State Street is not a passive bystander. With a stake that size, it is part of the reason Cummins leadership keeps its job. If it wanted a board-level reckoning on defeat devices, governance or the way Cummins treats its own people, it could push for one. Instead it is quietly increasing its position and turning up the “stewardship” marketing.

Search Engines Forget; Positions Do Not

The strangest part is not that a giant like State Street holds a big slice of Cummins. That is how the modern market is wired. The strangest part is that when someone joins the dots in public, the work can simply disappear from the main search index as if it never happened.

The first TCAP spotlight on State Street and Cummins clearly hit a nerve. It was visible, then it was not. The numbers have moved, the enforcement record has grown a new sanctions chapter, and the same investor is now even deeper into Cummins stock.

So here it is again.

If this version drops off Google as well, we will know we are over a target worth staying on.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

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