BlackRock - The company that owns the world?

2m read

·Feb 9, 2025

Narrator: There's a good chance you've never heard of BlackRock. Founded in only 1988 in less than 30 years this American financial firm would grow to become "the company that owns the world" managing assets worth 6,3 trillion dollars.

These are assets that belong to their clients mainly the pension funds of ordinary people: Teachers, police officers, nurses and many more. And that's just the beginning.

Blackrock has also developed a software platform called Aladdin to perform risk analysis for its clients. It receives sensitive data from banks, insurance companies and other important institutions. Through Aladdin, BlackRock has insights about the management of financial assets worth another 20 trillion dollars.

BlackRock also has shares and voting rights in many of the biggest European companies in sectors such as energy, oil and gas, transportation, food and of course finance. The company holds public debt in the form of bonds and has real estate interests. And still there's more.

Our rock, you see, wears many hats. Aside from being an investor it is also an auditor and an advisor.

Governments and central banks invite a Blackrock subsidiary called "Blackrock Solutions" to audit them and to provide advice about the management and rescue of banks. Yet at the same time BlackRock is often a major shareholder in these same banks. In other words, the company often sits on both sides of the table.

Blackrock Solutions gets privileged access to highly sensitive information information that could be valuable to BlackRock itself. Does this constitute a conflict of interest?

"No", says BlackRock which claims that the company has established "Chinese Walls" between its different subsidiaries. In January 2018, BlackRock's founder and chairman Larry Fink sent a letter to all of the CEOs of the companies BlackRock is invested in asking them to do more than deliver financial performance and make a... "positive contribution to society".

So BlackRock not only owns the world... it also wants to save it?

Warren Buffett: How Smart Investors Easily Identify Terrible Stocks

The Housing Crisis that's Collapsing an Economy

View All

Why Being Nice to Women Fails – Do THIS Instead Stoic Wisdom

Have you ever wondered why being nice to women doesn’t seem to get you anywhere? You do everything right—you’re respectful, you listen, you compliment her—yet she seems more drawn to the guy who barely tries. Why is that? Most men think being nice means b…

Why study US history, government, and civics? | US government and civics | Khan Academy

So John, if I’m a student studying American history or U.S. government, why should I care? Well, first, there are great stories. The characters in American history all the way through are fascinating; just human beings. They would make great movie charact…

2015 AP Calculus BC 2c | AP Calculus BC solved exams | AP Calculus BC | Khan Academy

Part C: Find the time at which the speed of the particle is three. So let’s just remind ourselves what speed is. It’s the magnitude of velocity. If you have the x, actually let me draw it this way. If you have the x dimension of, or the x component of a …

Olympic Training During a Pandemic | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

High jump is a part of me. This is Priscilla Frederick Loomis. She’s a track and field athlete, a high jumper, and she’s training for the 2021 Olympic Games. I look at the timer; 59 seconds remain. I fix my hair and roll back my shoulders. I look at the …

Introduction to contractions | The Apostrophe | Punctuation | Khan Academy

Hello grammarians! Hello David! Hello Paige! So today we’re going to talk about contractions, which are another use for our friend the apostrophe. So David, what is a contraction? So something that apostrophes are really good at doing is showing when le…

Queens of the High Seas | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

Did you ever play a video game that sucked you in and took over your life? I mean, if you have, you can relate, but if you haven’t, it’s similar to that feeling of reading an amazing book and staying up late to read just one more chapter. And then before …

BlackRock - The company that owns the world?

More Articles