BlackRock
Based on Wikipedia: BlackRock
The Quiet Giant That Owns Everything
Here's a number that should stop you in your tracks: twelve and a half trillion dollars.
That's how much money BlackRock manages as of 2025. To put that in perspective, it's roughly half the entire economic output of the United States in a year. It's more than the gross domestic product of every country on Earth except the United States and China. If BlackRock were a country, it would be the third-largest economy in the world.
Yet most people have never heard of it.
BlackRock isn't a bank. It doesn't lend money or hold deposits. It's something different—an asset manager, which means it invests other people's money for them. Your pension fund, your retirement account, the endowment of your local university—there's a reasonable chance BlackRock is managing some of that money right now. The company has clients in one hundred countries and offices in thirty of them. When you own shares of an index fund or an exchange-traded fund, particularly one with the name "iShares" on it, you're participating in a system that BlackRock built and controls.
The story of how eight people with a five million dollar credit line created what some economists now call "the world's largest shadow bank" reveals something fundamental about how modern finance works—and how much of it operates outside the institutions most people think of when they imagine Wall Street.
Born from Failure
BlackRock's origin story begins with a ninety million dollar disaster.
In the 1980s, Larry Fink was a rising star at First Boston, one of the major investment banks of the era. He and his team were pioneers in the mortgage-backed securities market—a financial innovation that bundled thousands of individual home mortgages together into a single tradeable investment. These instruments would later become infamous during the 2008 financial crisis, but in the mid-1980s, they were the hot new thing on Wall Street.
Then Fink's team lost ninety million dollars on a bad bet.
That kind of loss ends careers. But it also taught Fink something that would shape everything that came after: the financial industry had a risk management problem. Banks and investment firms were making enormous bets without fully understanding what could go wrong. The tools to measure and manage risk simply weren't sophisticated enough.
Fink saw an opportunity. In 1988, he gathered seven colleagues from First Boston—Robert Kapito, Susan Wagner, Barbara Novick, Ben Golub, Hugh Frater, Ralph Schlosstein, and Keith Anderson—and pitched an idea to Peter Peterson at the Blackstone Group. Peterson ran one of Wall Street's most prominent private equity firms, and Fink convinced him to back a new kind of company: one that would manage money for big institutions like pension funds and insurance companies, but with risk management at its core.
Peterson called the new venture Blackstone Financial Management and gave Fink's team a five million dollar credit line in exchange for half the business.
Within months, the venture was profitable. Within a year, assets under management had quadrupled to two point seven billion dollars.
The Breakup
Success created tension.
By 1992, the firm managed seventeen billion dollars, and Fink and Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman were discussing taking the company public. But they disagreed about something fundamental: how to attract talent.
Fink wanted to share equity with new hires. Wall Street runs on bonuses and stock options—that's how you lure the best people away from competitors. Schwarzman resisted because giving stock to employees meant diluting Blackstone's ownership stake.
They couldn't resolve it. In 1994, Schwarzman sold the mortgage securities unit to PNC Financial Services for two hundred forty million dollars. During the sale, the company changed its name from Blackstone Financial Management to BlackRock Financial Management—and then just BlackRock.
Schwarzman later called selling BlackRock a "heroic mistake." Given that his fifty percent stake would eventually have been worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the description seems accurate.
Fink stayed with the new company as chairman and chief executive officer, positions he still holds more than thirty years later.
The Machine That Sees Everything
To understand BlackRock's rise, you need to understand Aladdin.
That's not a reference to the Disney movie. Aladdin stands for Asset Liability and Debt and Derivative Investment Network—a software platform BlackRock developed to track investment portfolios and measure risk. In 2000, the company spun this technology into a separate division called BlackRock Solutions and began selling access to other financial institutions.
Think of Aladdin as the central nervous system of modern finance. Major banks, pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth funds use it to monitor their investments. The platform runs constant risk calculations, stress tests portfolios against various disaster scenarios, and provides analytics that help managers make decisions.
How dominant is Aladdin? By some estimates, it monitors over twenty trillion dollars in assets—nearly double what BlackRock itself manages. When the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department needed help navigating the 2008 financial crisis, they called BlackRock. The firm was hired to analyze and unwind the toxic assets held by Bear Stearns, the American International Group (better known as AIG), Freddie Mac, and Morgan Stanley. The Federal Reserve gave BlackRock oversight of a one hundred thirty billion dollar debt settlement.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and the Federal Reserve needed to buy corporate bonds to stabilize markets, they called BlackRock again.
This creates an unusual situation. BlackRock is simultaneously a private company managing trillions in assets and a quasi-governmental entity that gets called in to help stabilize the financial system during crises. Critics argue this gives BlackRock an information advantage no competitor can match. Defenders say the government calls BlackRock because its systems actually work.
The iShares Empire
BlackRock's biggest acquisition came in 2010, when it bought Barclays Global Investors for thirteen and a half billion dollars.
The prize wasn't Barclays' analysts or its trading desks. It was iShares—a family of exchange-traded funds, commonly called ETFs.
An exchange-traded fund is a basket of investments you can buy and sell like a stock. If you want exposure to the entire stock market without picking individual companies, you can buy an ETF that tracks the Standard and Poor's 500 index. If you want to invest in gold without storing physical bars in your basement, there's an ETF for that. Want to bet on Brazilian stocks, clean energy companies, or semiconductor manufacturers? There are ETFs for all of those too.
ETFs have transformed how people invest. They're cheap—much cheaper than traditional mutual funds—because most of them simply track an index rather than paying expensive managers to pick stocks. They're liquid—you can buy or sell them any time the market is open, unlike mutual funds which only trade once a day. And they're transparent—you can see exactly what's in them.
BlackRock's iShares business now manages over one and a half trillion dollars, representing more than a quarter of the company's total assets. Along with Vanguard, Fidelity, and State Street, BlackRock is one of the "Big Four" index fund managers that collectively control a staggering portion of the American stock market.
The Common Ownership Problem
Here's where things get philosophically complicated.
When you buy shares of an iShares ETF that tracks the airline industry, your money gets invested in multiple competing airlines—Delta, United, American, Southwest, all of them. BlackRock ends up as a major shareholder in each company. The same pattern repeats across every industry: banks, tech companies, retailers, pharmaceutical firms.
Economists call this "common ownership"—when the same shareholders own stakes in competing businesses. Does it matter?
Some researchers argue it does. If BlackRock owns significant stakes in every major airline, does it have an incentive for those airlines to compete aggressively on prices? Or would BlackRock be better off if all airlines kept prices high? After all, fierce competition might benefit passengers, but it would hurt the profits of the companies BlackRock's clients own.
BlackRock's position is that these shares ultimately belong to its clients—the pension funds, retirement accounts, and individuals who invest through its products—not to BlackRock itself. Multiple independent academics share this view. But BlackRock does acknowledge it exercises shareholder votes on behalf of these clients, often without their input.
In the 2020s, BlackRock has taken steps to address this concern. The company launched a "Voting Choice" program that allows institutional investors to participate in shareholder votes rather than delegating that power to BlackRock. Clients can vote on all issues, vote on some issues, select from fourteen different voting policy templates, or let BlackRock's investment stewardship team handle it for them.
That stewardship team consists of about seventy analysts who engage with corporate boards and management teams on behalf of clients who don't vote themselves. Their decisions affect thousands of companies and trillions of dollars in assets.
The ESG Wars
Environmental, social, and governance considerations—commonly abbreviated as ESG—have become one of the most contentious issues in American finance. And BlackRock finds itself at the center of the fight.
The concept is straightforward. ESG investing means considering not just financial returns but also factors like a company's carbon emissions, its treatment of workers, and the quality of its corporate governance. Proponents argue these factors affect long-term value—a company poisoning its workers or destroying the environment might generate short-term profits but faces long-term risks from lawsuits, regulations, and reputational damage.
BlackRock has positioned itself as an industry leader in ESG investing. Larry Fink's annual letters to CEOs have become major events in the corporate world, and he's used them to push companies on climate change, workforce diversity, and stakeholder capitalism—the idea that companies should serve not just shareholders but also employees, communities, and the environment.
This has made BlackRock a target.
Conservative politicians argue the firm is pursuing a political agenda with other people's money. West Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana have divested state funds from BlackRock or refuse to do business with the company because of its ESG policies. Some Republicans have accused BlackRock of "woke capitalism."
Meanwhile, critics from the left argue BlackRock isn't going nearly far enough. Despite its ESG rhetoric, BlackRock continues to invest heavily in fossil fuel companies, arms manufacturers, and firms with operations in China that critics link to human rights violations. Environmental activists have accused the company of greenwashing—talking a good game on climate while financing the industries driving climate change.
BlackRock occupies an uncomfortable position, criticized from both directions. To conservatives, it's an activist firm imposing progressive values on the economy. To progressives, it's a master of public relations that talks about sustainability while financing exactly the industries that need to be reformed.
Shadow Banking
In 2020, a report from the American Economic Liberties Project noted that BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street together managed over fifteen trillion dollars—equivalent to more than three-quarters of America's annual economic output. The report called for structural reforms and better regulation.
The Economist and other publications have labeled BlackRock "the world's largest shadow bank." That term deserves explanation.
A traditional bank takes deposits from customers and lends that money to borrowers. This basic function—taking in deposits and making loans—is heavily regulated. Banks must maintain certain capital reserves, submit to regular examinations, and follow rules designed to prevent the kind of failures that can cascade through the financial system.
A shadow bank performs similar economic functions but outside this regulatory framework. Asset managers like BlackRock don't take deposits or make loans in the traditional sense, but they move enormous amounts of money through the financial system. When BlackRock's funds buy corporate bonds, that's effectively a form of lending. When investors can redeem their ETF shares at any time, that's functionally similar to a deposit account.
The concern is that shadow banks could amplify financial crises. If investors panic and try to pull their money out of BlackRock's funds all at once, the firm would need to sell assets quickly—potentially at fire-sale prices—which could depress markets further and trigger more panic.
In 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren suggested that BlackRock should be designated "too big to fail" and regulated accordingly. Representatives Katie Porter and Chuy García proposed legislation to restrain BlackRock and other shadow banks. So far, these efforts haven't succeeded, but the debate continues.
Going Digital
BlackRock has moved aggressively into cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
In June 2023, the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund—a fund that would hold actual Bitcoin rather than futures contracts or derivatives. This was significant because the SEC had rejected every previous application for such a product. BlackRock's involvement signaled that the most powerful asset manager in the world saw a future in cryptocurrency.
The application was approved in January 2024, along with ten others. BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust, trading under the ticker symbol IBIT, became the first spot Bitcoin ETF to reach one billion dollars in trading volume. By May 2024, it was the world's largest Bitcoin fund, with nearly twenty billion dollars in assets.
The company has also explored blockchain technology itself. In March 2024, BlackRock launched its first tokenized fund—the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund—on the Ethereum blockchain. A tokenized fund represents traditional investments (in this case, U.S. Treasury bills and repurchase agreements) as digital tokens that can be traded on a blockchain. The fund attracted two hundred forty-five million dollars in its first week.
In April 2025, BlackRock filed with the SEC to create a new share class of its one hundred fifty billion dollar money market fund that would be registered on a blockchain. This suggests the company sees blockchain not just as a niche for cryptocurrency speculation but as potential infrastructure for mainstream finance.
Global Reach and Political Connections
BlackRock's influence extends far beyond traditional investing.
In August 2020, the company became the first global asset manager to receive approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission to operate a mutual fund business in mainland China. This made BlackRock one of the few Western financial firms with direct access to Chinese retail investors.
In India, BlackRock formed a joint venture with Jio Financial Services in 2023, combining the American firm's asset management expertise with the distribution network of India's largest conglomerate.
In December 2022, BlackRock announced it would help coordinate the reconstruction of Ukraine, working directly with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Chief executive Larry Fink and Zelensky had met via video conference that September. However, by July 2025, Bloomberg reported that BlackRock had paused efforts to assemble investors for a proposed Ukraine recovery fund amid increased uncertainty. The company stated it had completed its pro bono advisory work in 2024.
When Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in 2023, regulators hired BlackRock to sell one hundred fourteen billion dollars in assets from the failed institutions.
In New Zealand, BlackRock signed an agreement to establish a two billion dollar fund for renewable energy projects including solar, wind, green hydrogen, battery storage, and electric vehicle charging stations.
The company's board reflects its global ambitions. In July 2023, BlackRock appointed Amin H. Nasser—the chief executive of Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company—to its board of directors. This appointment raised eyebrows given BlackRock's public positioning on climate issues, but it also highlighted the company's relationships with sovereign wealth funds and national oil companies that control enormous pools of capital.
Conspiracy and Reality
BlackRock's size and opacity have made it a target for conspiracy theories.
One persistent claim holds that BlackRock owns both Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, supposedly giving it control over both media and elections. Fact-checkers at Snopes and PolitiFact have rated this claim false. While BlackRock does own about fifteen percent of Fox Corporation, it has no ownership stake in Dominion Voting Systems. But the mere existence of these theories reflects genuine public unease about concentrated financial power.
More troubling conspiracy theories have incorporated antisemitic elements, with some claiming that Jewish people, including BlackRock co-founder Robert Kapito, are part of a secret cabal responsible for COVID-19. These theories have no basis in reality but circulate on social media and fringe websites.
The mundane truth is more interesting than the conspiracies. BlackRock's power comes not from secret manipulation but from the straightforward mechanics of index investing. When millions of people invest their retirement savings in low-cost index funds, and those funds are managed by a handful of large firms, power concentrates naturally. No conspiracy required—just the economics of scale.
Who Owns BlackRock?
Given all this discussion of ownership, who owns BlackRock itself?
PNC Financial Services was the company's largest shareholder for years, holding twenty-five percent of all shares as of 2018. But in 2020, PNC sold its entire stake for fourteen point four billion dollars—a remarkable return on the two hundred forty million it paid for a spin-off from Blackstone back in 1994.
Today, over eighty percent of BlackRock is owned by institutional investors—pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies. The largest shareholders include the very firms BlackRock competes with: Vanguard, State Street, and Fidelity all appear on the shareholder list. This creates an interesting loop where the major asset managers all own significant stakes in each other.
BlackRock is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It went public in October 1999, selling shares at fourteen dollars each. Those shares now trade for roughly nine hundred dollars, a sixty-fold increase not counting dividends.
The company is a component of the Standard and Poor's 500 index, which means most index funds that track the American stock market include BlackRock shares. If you own a total market index fund in your retirement account, you probably own a tiny sliver of BlackRock—which manages index funds—which owns slivers of thousands of other companies—some of which probably own slivers of BlackRock.
The financial system, it turns out, is a hall of mirrors.
What Does This Mean for Education Workers?
If you work in education, BlackRock likely touches your life in ways you might not realize.
Most public employee pension funds invest through major asset managers, and BlackRock is the largest. The retirement security of teachers, school administrators, and university staff may depend partly on decisions made in BlackRock's New York headquarters at 50 Hudson Yards.
State divestment campaigns targeting BlackRock over ESG policies could affect returns for public pension funds in those states. When West Virginia or Florida pulls money from BlackRock, that's a decision that could ripple through to retirement benefits for state employees.
BlackRock's investments in education technology companies, student loan servicers, and for-profit education firms give it influence over the business side of education. Its shareholder votes can affect corporate policies at companies that sell products and services to schools.
The company's Aladdin platform helps manage investments for many university endowments, giving it a window into the financial operations of higher education.
None of this means BlackRock is consciously targeting education workers or their interests. But when a single firm manages assets equivalent to forty percent of America's gross domestic product, its decisions inevitably affect virtually everyone—including the people who teach the next generation.
The Future of the Giant
In June 2025, BlackRock launched the iShares Texas Equity ETF, a fund focused specifically on companies headquartered in Texas. It's a small product in the context of a twelve trillion dollar empire, but it signals the company's continued expansion into niche markets and specialized products.
The company's move into cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, tokenized funds, and digital assets suggests it sees the future of finance as increasingly technological. Its expansion into China, India, and emerging markets reflects a bet that global growth will come from outside the developed economies that have been its traditional base.
Meanwhile, political scrutiny intensifies. The ESG debates show no signs of resolution. Questions about common ownership and market concentration will likely grow louder as assets continue to concentrate in fewer hands.
Larry Fink, now in his early seventies, has led the company since its founding in 1988. Succession planning at a firm this large and this central to global finance will be one of the most consequential leadership transitions in financial history.
What started with a ninety million dollar loss and a five million dollar credit line has become something unprecedented: a private company that manages more wealth than most nations produce, that gets called in to stabilize financial systems during crises, and that holds significant ownership stakes in nearly every major publicly traded company on Earth.
Whether that concentration of power is efficient or dangerous—or both—remains one of the central questions of modern capitalism.