BlackRock

Company Profile

In an increasingly complex world, investment insights and connections matter more than ever to uncover investment opportunities, understand portfolio risks and stay abreast of innovation across asset classes.  

As a trusted fiduciary, we provide family offices curated access to the full spectrum of BlackRock capabilities, with investment strategies across all asset classes, risk management and technology solutions. 

Our dedicated global family office team understands the nuances of managing family wealth and the challenges of balancing current needs with future ones. The team delivers a highly tailored service, designing investment strategies, solutions and analytics to help our clients meet their investment objectives. 

Alternative Investments 

Alternative strategies play an increasingly critical role in family office portfolios. In our recent Family Office survey, allocations to alternatives (39%) exceeded allocations to public equities (37%), with 84% of respondents citing higher return potential as the reason to invest in alternative assets (BlackRock Family Office Survey 2022-2023, January 2023). 

Our platform is designed to deliver solutions that offer unique sources of return across a range of investment asset classes including private equity, private credit, hedge funds, infrastructure and real estate. 

We believe the need for an approach to alternative investing that is scalable, disciplined, technology-enabled and transparent has never been greater. Which is why we recently agreed to acquire Preqin, a preeminent private markets technology and data provider, as a step towards transforming private markets. For family offices, it signifies a future where data, technology and strategic insights converge to unlock new investment opportunities. 

Equities 

Family offices seeking resilient long-term capital appreciation and/or exposure to specific sectors in their diversified portfolio often look for investment opportunities across BlackRock’s extensive equity platform. 

Our fundamental and systematic equity strategies offer family office investors curated access to global markets and key investment insights. BlackRock’s equity investors and researchers combine company-specific research, innovative proprietary modelling and industry analysis to provide clients with insights that aim to deliver consistent, differentiated outperformance. 

Fixed Income 

Family offices seeking to achieve positive returns with historically lower risk than other asset classes are utilising fixed income strategies within their broader portfolio. We help family office investors navigate the entire fixed income spectrum – from taxable & tax-exempt, active & index, public to private, fundamental & systematic – to help deliver better outcomes, convenience, value and transparency. 

Cash Management 

Our clients need effective cash management solutions that consider anticipated liquidity needs, inflows from operating businesses and personal expenditure, while offering the potential for an enhanced yield profile, hedged against risk. 

BlackRock offers investment strategies and vehicles such as money market accounts (MMAs), short duration strategies, ETFs and separately managed accounts (SMAs) to deliver on a family office’s individual liquidity needs. 

Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) 

As family offices face in-house resource constraints and increasingly complex responsibilities, using an outsourced investment team is a cost-effective and consistent solution. 

At BlackRock, we offer fully bespoke, discretionary solutions which leverage the firm’s scale, insights and global reach across all asset classes. We can serve as the investment arm for a family office or as an extension of their investment team, providing institutional quality single-asset, multi-asset or whole portfolio solutions. 

Our family office clients get access to the very best of BlackRock’s investment platform and technology. All portfolios are managed on Aladdin, our market leading technology and risk system which ensures we spend our time managing risk, not calculating it. 

Every portfolio is purposely designed to deliver the unique investment objectives of our family office clients, managed by our dedicated CIOs who have firsthand experience working in family offices. 

As an investment partner to some of the most sophisticated investors in the world, we understand what drives investment success. 

Spear’s Review

American multinational investment company BlackRock is one of the world’s leading providers of investment, advisory and risk management solutions. A global company with 78 offices in 36 countries, the firm is the world's largest asset manager and has $9.42 trillion in assets under management as of June 2023.

With a mandate to ‘make investing work for more people’, BlackRock’s clients include individuals and families, financial advisers, family offices, educational and nonprofit organisations, pension plans, insurance companies and governments.

A leading provider of financial technology – its Aladdin operating system is used by hundreds of firms to gain clarity around investment portfolios – BlackRock also sees stewardship as core to its role as a fiduciary and asset manager, and so engages with boards and management teams, and votes as a shareholder on clients’ behalf, to help deliver durable, long-term returns. It is also the largest provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) worldwide via iShares.

History

Founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, Robert S. Kapito, Susan Wagner, Barbara Novick, Ben Golub, Hugh Frater, Ralph Schlosstein and Keith Anderson, BlackRock initially provided institutional clients with asset management and risk management services.

Backed from its inception by the Blackstone Group, the then-named Blackstone Financial Management quadrupled its assets within a year, and was managing $53 billion by 1994. That same year, the company was sold and adopted the name BlackRock.

In 1999, BlackRock issued an IPO, and by the end of the year was managing $165 billion in assets. It also began to sell its proprietary Aladdin investment management technology, and in 2000 launched BlackRock Solutions, its analytics and risk management division that has the Aladdin platform at its core.

In 2004, BlackRock acquired State Street Research & Management from MetLife, increasing its assets under management from $314 billion to $325 billion, and in 2006 it acquired Merrill Lynch Investment Management, expanding its retail and international presence. This activity continued into 2007, when it acquired the fund-of-funds business of Quellos Capital Management.

Amid the 2008 financial crisis, BlackRock was asked by the US Treasury Department to analyse Bear Stearns' mortgage-backed securities assets and determine their value. Its Financial Markets Advisory arm also analysed, unwound and priced assets owned by American International Group, Freddie Mac, Morgan Stanley and other financial firms.

In 2009 and 2010, BlackRock acquired Barclays Global Investors – including iShares – and R3 Capital Management, and became the world's largest asset manager, with employees in 24 countries. 

By 2015, BlackRock had $4.7 trillion of assets under management, and acquired FutureAdvisor – a digital wealth management provider – to operate within BlackRock Solutions. In 2017 BlackRock expanded its focus on ESG, raising awareness of environmental and diversity issues via Chairman and CEO Larry Fink’s letters to CEOs as well as shareholder votes.

The firm acquired eFront, a provider of end-to-end alternative investment management software and solutions, in 2019, allowing investors to manage portfolios across public and private asset classes on a single platform.

In 2020, the US Federal Reserve chose BlackRock to manage two corporate bond-buying programmes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That year BlackRock also received approval to set up a mutual fund business in China, making it the first global asset manager to get consent from the Chinese government to operate in the country.

In 2023, BlackRock was hired to sell $114 billion in assets of Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank after the 2023 global banking crisis. In November 2023, BlackRock applied to list a spot Ethereum ETF, which, if approved, would be the first of its kind in the US.

Senior leadership

Chairman and CEO: Larry Fink

President: Rob Kapito

Head of UK: Sarah Melvin

Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa: Stephen Cohen

Chair and Head of Asia Pacific: Rachel Lord

Head of Greater China: Susan Chan

Private client services

Serving individuals as well as professionals and institutional investors, BlackRock’s products include single and multi-asset class portfolios investing in equities, fixed income, alternatives and money market instruments.

Individual (retail) investors can access a variety of funds, including equities, fixed income, alternatives, cash, indexing and multi-asset.

Professional and institutional investors – private banks, wealth managers, retail banks and fin-techs, financial advisers and portfolio managers – can assess solutions around alternatives, equities, fixed income, multi-asset investing, sustainable investing, cash management and systematic investing. This can include fiduciary management, transition management, securities lending and financial markets advisory, as well as Aladdin portfolio management.

The BlackRock Portfolio Analysis and Solutions consultancy empowers managers to gain new perspectives on their portfolios, providing a spectrum of portfolio consulting services tailored for investors who want to retain control of asset allocation and implementation decisions.

BlackRock also provides HNW individuals, single- and multi-family offices, foundations, trusts and charities with institutional investment and risk management solutions.

With a focus on asset management, the family office and endowments team uses BlackRock’s scale and position in capital markets to provide access to an array of investment opportunities across the risk-return spectrum. The team works with BlackRock’s active equity, fixed income and alternatives investment managers from around the world, leveraging the risk management systems of BlackRock Solutions.

Locations

North America: Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Greenwich, CT; Houston, TX; México City, México; Miami, FL; Montreal, Canada; New York, NY; Newport Beach, CA; Palo Alto, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Princeton, NJ; San Francisco, CA; Santa Monica, CA; Seattle, WA; Toronto, Canada; Washington, DC; West Palm Beach, FL; Wilmington, DE

South America: Bogotá, Colombia; Santiago, Chile; São Paulo, Brazil 

Europe: Amsterdam, Netherlands; Belgrade, Serbia; Brussels, Belgium; Budapest, Hungary; Copenhagen, Denmark; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh, Scotland; Frankfurt, Germany; Geneva, Switzerland; Helsinki, Finland; London, England; Luxembourg; Madrid, Spain; Milan, Italy; Munich, Germany; Paris, France; Stockholm, Sweden; Vienna, Austria; Zurich, Switzerland

Middle East: Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Tel-Aviv, Israel

Africa: Cape Town, South Africa

Asia Pacific: Bengaluru, India; Beijing, China; Brisbane, Australia; Gurgaon, India; Hong Kong; Melbourne, Australia; Mumbai, India; Seoul, Korea; Shanghai, China; Singapore; Sydney, Australia; Taipei, Taiwan; Tokyo, Japan