BlackRock

BlackRock was born from a painful lesson. In the early 1980s, Larry Fink was co-head of First Boston's Fixed Income Division when he lost $90 million on a complex mortgage trade. That failure drove him to build a firm where rigorous risk analysis came before everything else. In 1988, he and seven partners founded BlackRock in New York City, with startup funding from Pete Peterson at The Blackstone Group. The name stuck, but BlackRock was never part of Blackstone. The company went public in 1999 (NYSE: BLK) and has since grown into the planet's largest asset manager, overseeing roughly $12.5 trillion in assets as of 2025.

That growth came through a series of bold acquisitions. The 2006 purchase of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers added scale in active management. The 2009 acquisition of Barclays Global Investors brought the iShares ETF business, instantly making BlackRock a titan of passive investing. More recent deals include eFront (2019) for private markets technology, Aperio (2020) for tax-managed equity, and Global Infrastructure Partners in October 2024, which cemented its push into infrastructure. Today, BlackRock runs 70 offices across 30 countries, serving clients in over 100 nations.

Beyond managing money, BlackRock wields influence through its Aladdin platform, a risk and portfolio management system used by banks, insurers, and pension funds worldwide. Aladdin gives BlackRock a rare dual revenue stream: asset management fees plus technology licensing income. The firm also dominates ETFs through iShares, one of the most recognized brands in investing. Its sheer size makes it a top shareholder in nearly every major public company, giving it outsized sway in corporate governance debates, especially around climate risk, which CEO Larry Fink has pushed via his annual letter to CEOs. [edit]