Leading with purpose

As the world's biggest fund manager, BlackRock is using its influence to espouse its bedrock values. Chairman and CEO Larry Fink himself seeks to be a "voice of positiveness" - and says corporations need, now more than ever as governments fall short, to step up in key issues.

Genevieve Cua

Published Fri, Dec 7, 2018 · 09:50 PM

Larry Fink

BY any measure, BlackRock's ascent from US$1.2 billion in assets under management (AUM) when it was founded some 30 years ago to a stunning US$6.44 trillion as at end-September is unprecedented.

But chairman and chief executive Larry Fink says that he thinks of BlackRock's trajectory in "geologic" terms. "What we have done over the course of the years has been sedimentary rock. We've been building ourselves. The beauty was that in the first 10 to 14 years, no one cared about us. We did it privately, systematically. Now we still do it systematically, but we're public and there is quite a bit of media attention on what we do."

He was in Singapore recently for the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.