(Bloomberg) — BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink pledged to open up private markets to millions of everyday investors, not just the wealthy few, contending individuals should share more of the gains from economic growth.
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“Today, many countries have twin, inverted economies: one where wealth builds on wealth; another where hardship builds on hardship,” Fink said Monday in his annual letter to investors. “The divide has reshaped our politics, our policies, even our sense of what’s possible. Protectionism has returned with force.”
The world’s largest asset manager now sees part of its purpose as “unlocking private markets,” said Fink, whose firm has committed almost $30 billion in the past year to acquisitions in that area.
Capitalism has worked “for too few people” in recent years, Fink said, spreading anxiety across the economy. There’s more unease about the economy than at “any time in recent memory,” he said.
But expanding access to investments will help ease worries, according to Fink.
“Assets that will define the future — data centers, ports, power grids, the world’s fastest-growing private companies — aren’t available to most investors,” Fink said. “They’re in private markets, locked behind high walls, with gates that open only for the wealthiest or largest market participants.”
Fink has used years of letters to corporate executives and shareholders to weigh in on the market as well as hot-button social and political issues. With BlackRock managing considerable stakes in companies and bond issuers around the world, the firm’s size has given given Fink a powerful voice.
The missives have also drawn criticism over the years, particularly in 2020 when the CEO said sustainability would be the asset manager’s new standard for investing.
Identity Shift
The vision for private markets is the next step in Fink’s effort to transform BlackRock into the first firm to manage money at scale across traditional and alternative assets. BlackRock rode a decade-long boom in low-cost index funds and now sees the future in more lucrative private assets.
“We’ve been — first and foremost — a traditional asset manager,” Fink said. “That’s who we were at the start of 2024. But it’s not who we are anymore.”
Over the past 14 months, BlackRock committed $12.5 billion to buy Global Infrastructure Partners and £2.55 billion ($3.3 billion) for data firm Preqin. It’s in the process of completing a $12 billion acquisition of private credit firm HPS Investment Partners.
