BlackRock
BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, it is the largest asset manager in the world, with 15.3 trillion dollars under management as of 2026. Headquartered in New York City, it has 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries.
| BlackRock, Inc. | |
|---|---|
| Type | Public |
| Traded as | NYSE: BLK |
| Industry | Investment management |
| Founded | 1988, New York City |
| Founder | Larry Fink, Robert S. Kapito, Susan Wagner, Barbara Novick, Bennett Golub, Hugh Frater, Ralph Schlosstein, Keith Anderson |
| Headquarters | New York City, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Larry Fink (chairman and CEO) |
| Products | iShares exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, separate accounts |
| Services | Asset management, Aladdin risk platform, BlackRock Solutions |
| Total assets | US$15.3 trillion under management (2026) |
| Website | blackrock.com |
BlackRock manages the iShares group of exchange-traded funds and, with Fidelity, Vanguard and State Street, is one of the Big Three index fund managers. Its Aladdin software tracks investment portfolios for many major financial institutions, and its BlackRock Solutions division provides financial risk management services. It is ranked 210th on the Fortune 500.
The scale of its holdings, accumulated largely through index funds that must own the entire market, has made BlackRock a recurring subject of political controversy from both left and right, concerning the concentration of voting power over public companies in the hands of a small number of asset managers.
History
Foundation, 1988 to 1999
BlackRock was founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, Robert S. Kapito, Susan Wagner, Barbara Novick, Bennett Golub, Hugh Frater, Ralph Schlosstein and Keith Anderson, to provide institutional clients with asset management from a risk management perspective.
Fink, Kapito, Golub and Novick had worked together at First Boston, where Fink and his team pioneered the American mortgage-backed securities market. Fink had lost 90 million dollars as co-head of the fixed income division, an experience that supplied the motivation for what the founders regarded as rigorous risk management and fiduciary practice, and which shaped the firm's identity: BlackRock sold not returns but the ability to know precisely what risks a portfolio contained.
Fink sought initial operating capital from Peter Peterson of The Blackstone Group, who backed the idea and named it Blackstone Financial Management. In exchange for a 50 per cent stake in the bond business, Blackstone provided a five million dollar credit line. The business was profitable within months, and by 1989 its assets had quadrupled to 2.7 billion dollars, with Blackstone's stake falling to 40 per cent.
By 1992 Blackstone held about 36 per cent, the firm had adopted the name BlackRock, and it managed 17 billion dollars, rising to 53 billion dollars by the end of 1994.
In 1994 Fink and Stephen A. Schwarzman fell out over compensation and equity. Fink wanted to share equity with new hires in order to attract talent from banks; Schwarzman did not want Blackstone's stake diluted further. They agreed to separate, and in June 1994 Blackstone sold a mortgage securities unit with 23 billion dollars in assets to PNC Financial Services for 240 million dollars. During the sale the unit was renamed from Blackstone Financial Management to BlackRock Financial Management. Schwarzman later described selling BlackRock as a heroic mistake.
Public company and expansion, 1999 to 2009
BlackRock went public on 1 October 1999, selling shares at 14 dollars each on the New York Stock Exchange, and ended the year managing 165 billion dollars.
In 2000 it launched BlackRock Solutions, providing risk management and investment analytics to institutional investors and other managers, built on the Aladdin system, an acronym for Asset Liability and Debt and Derivative Investment Network. Aladdin became a distinctive asset: rival institutions run their own portfolios on software supplied by their largest competitor.
In August 2004 BlackRock made its first major acquisition, buying SSRM Holdings, the holding company of State Street Research and Management, from MetLife for 325 million dollars in cash and 50 million dollars in stock, raising assets under management from 314 billion to 325 billion dollars.
In 2006 it merged with Merrill Lynch's investment management division, halving PNC's ownership and giving Merrill a 49.5 per cent stake. It acquired the fund-of-funds business of Quellos Capital Management in October 2007 and R3 Capital Management in April 2009.
In May 2009 BlackRock Solutions was retained by the United States Treasury to analyse, unwind and price the distressed assets held by Bear Stearns, American International Group, Freddie Mac, Morgan Stanley and other firms affected by the financial crisis, and the Federal Reserve allowed it to superintend the 130 billion dollar debt settlement of Bear Stearns and AIG. The mandate established BlackRock's position as the government's adviser of choice in financial emergencies and, for critics, raised the question of how a firm could advise on the valuation of assets in markets where it was also a participant.
Index funds and scale, 2010 onward
In February 2010 Barclays, raising capital after the crisis, sold Barclays Global Investors, including its iShares exchange-traded fund business, to BlackRock for 13.5 billion dollars, taking a stake of nearly 20 per cent in BlackRock in return.
The iShares acquisition was transformative. It made BlackRock the largest provider of exchange-traded funds in the world and shifted its centre of gravity from active fixed income management to passive index investing, the fastest growing segment of the industry.
BlackRock joined the S&P 500 on 1 April 2011 and appeared on Fortune's list of the world's 50 most admired companies in 2013. By 2014 it managed four trillion dollars, making it the largest asset manager in the world, with 65 per cent of assets from institutional investors at the end of that year. Assets reached 4.721 trillion dollars by 30 June 2015.
In August 2015 it agreed to acquire FutureAdvisor, a digital wealth management provider with about 600 million dollars under management, to operate within BlackRock Solutions. In November 2015 it wound down the BlackRock Global Ascent hedge fund, its only dedicated global macro fund, after losses; at the time it managed 51 billion dollars in hedge funds.
Subsequent expansion moved into private markets, with the acquisitions of Global Infrastructure Partners and the private markets data provider Preqin in 2024, reflecting a strategy of building capability in less liquid assets where fees are higher than in index products.
Controversies
Concentration of ownership
The central criticism of BlackRock concerns scale. Because index funds must hold every company in an index, BlackRock is among the largest shareholders in most large listed companies in the world. Scholars and regulators have raised concerns about common ownership, the possibility that shareholders holding stakes in every firm in an industry weaken the incentive for those firms to compete, and about the transfer of voting power from beneficial owners to a small number of asset managers.
BlackRock's response has been to expand its Voting Choice programme, allowing institutional and some retail clients to direct the votes attached to their holdings, and to argue that it is a fiduciary acting on behalf of savers rather than an owner in its own right.
Environmental, social and governance investing
Larry Fink's annual letters to chief executives, which from 2018 emphasised climate risk and stakeholder considerations, made BlackRock a focal point in the political dispute over environmental, social and governance investing.
Climate campaigners criticised the firm for continuing to hold and finance fossil fuel companies while advocating climate awareness, and for voting against shareholder climate resolutions in the large majority of cases. From the opposite direction, officials in several American states withdrew funds from BlackRock management, arguing that consideration of climate risk breached fiduciary duty and represented a political agenda, and antitrust authorities examined whether coordinated climate commitments among asset managers restrained competition in energy markets. BlackRock subsequently reduced the prominence of the language, left the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative in 2025, and stated that its role is to offer clients choice rather than to direct capital on political grounds.
Conflicts of interest in government mandates
BlackRock's repeated engagement by governments and central banks, including the Federal Reserve's mandate to purchase corporate bonds and exchange-traded funds during the 2020 pandemic response, drew criticism because the programme purchased funds that BlackRock itself managed. The Federal Reserve stated that the firm was selected for its operational capability and that fees were rebated where its own products were bought, but the arrangement was cited by legislators as an example of the difficulty of separating adviser from beneficiary in concentrated markets.
Aladdin
The widespread use of the Aladdin platform across the industry has prompted concern from financial stability regulators that reliance on a single risk model could cause correlated behaviour in a crisis, as many institutions receive similar signals simultaneously. BlackRock maintains that Aladdin is a tool for analysis rather than a source of investment decisions and that users configure their own assumptions.
Political attention
The firm has been the subject of conspiracy theories concerning its supposed control of the global economy, and of more substantive criticism regarding its lobbying, the movement of personnel between BlackRock and government, and its investments in defence and in housing. Reporting that institutional investors were buying single-family homes in the United States frequently named BlackRock, although the firm's direct exposure to that market was limited, a distinction often lost in public debate.
See also
References