FIDUCIARY: FOR YOU

  • Your Future
  • Your Platform
  • Your Technology
  • Your Solutions
  • Your Partners
  • Our Responsibility
  • 30 years
Your Future Your Platform Your Technology Your Solutions Your Partners Our Responsibility 30 years
Your Future Your Platform Your Technology Your Solutions Your Partners Our Responsibility 30 years Letter to Shareholders

our mission is your future

INVESTING VS. SAVING

BlackRock invests for you

BlackRock’s business is to invest your assets to help you achieve your financial goals. Our leading principle is that we are a fiduciary to our clients — put simply, your goals are our goals. 

Whether you are a couple looking to retire with dignity; a parent planning to send your child to college; a government looking to build better cities for your citizens — BlackRock invests for you. 

We do our jobs each day with the greater purpose of helping more and more individuals achieve well-being through the creation of wealth. 

We stay ahead of market dynamics, changes in the regulatory environment, geopolitical issues and advancements in technology; we study and manage risk; and we build new innovative strategies — all so that we can help you achieve your long-term investment goals. 

We invest in BlackRock with that same focus on the future: we invest in our platform, our people and our technology so that we can continue to deliver long-term value for our clients and our shareholders.

 

Your Platform

    

Delivering a new dimension of solutions

As an investor, you’re focused on an outcome. You want to invest, but you also want to manage the amount of risk you take. You need the right mix of investment strategies to achieve your goals. 

BlackRock offers a full spectrum of investment strategies — diverse across investment styles, asset classes and regions — which allows us to focus on you: what you need, when you need it. 

BlackRock’s combination of global expertise, robust research and Aladdin® technology gives us a unique capability to understand, analyze and address our clients’ most complex issues in a whole-portfolio context. We use this integrated investment and technology platform to build the right solutions for you. 

Our diversified platform also translates into more consistent results for BlackRock across market cycles, enabling us to continuously invest in our business for the future. We invest for the future so that we can continue providing customized solutions for clients and delivering consistent earnings growth and capital return for shareholders over time.

$6.3 TRILLION OF AUM

BLK_AR17_Narrative_pie_1
  • 53% Equity
  • 30% Fixed Income
  • 8% Multi-Asset
  • 7% Cash
  • 2% Alternatives
BLK_AR17_Narrative_pie_2
  • 27% Active
  • 38% non-ETF Index
  • 28% iShares®
  • 7% Cash

Index Strategies Strategies that track a benchmark and hold its underlying components to provide broad diversification or targeted market exposure

Alternative Strategies Strategies, including hedge funds, private equity, real estate, infrastructure and commodities, that offer diversification and aim to deliver higher returns than traditional equity and fixed income markets

Alpha-Seeking Strategies Strategies that aim to deliver returns above a benchmark through fundamental human insight and systematic machine intelligence

Cash Strategies Strategies that provide a return while preserving the principal investment and liquidity 

Your Technology


Technology to manage your risks and drive your returns

BlackRock embraces the power of technology to invest and generate more durable alpha for you; to manage risk across your portfolios; to help our intermediary partners manage risk, construct portfolios and scale their distribution efforts; and finally, to operate our own business more efficiently.

We invested in technology from the very beginning, building Aladdin, BlackRock's unifying investment and risk management platform, and continue to improve it every day.

The analytical capabilities of Aladdin enable us to see risk clearer, construct sophisticated outcome-oriented portfolios for clients in an even more complex world and run BlackRock's diverse, global business model on a unifying platform.

In addition to investing in technology to use as we invest, manage risk and operate, we have a range of technology offerings for our clients to use:

  •  We offer Aladdin to asset managers, insurers and other institutions to help them invest and manage risk in their portfolios
  •  We offer technology to intermediary distribution partners to help them manage risk
  •  We offer technology to financial advisors to help them build better portfolios and spend more time with more clients
  •  We offer technology to our custodial bank partners to increase their efficiency and minimize risk
  •  We offer technology to banks to help them provide their corporate treasurer clients an easier way to manage cash

Whether you are an individual, an intermediary or a sophisticated institution, BlackRock invests in technology for you.


Aladdin Asset Liability And Debt and Derivative Investment Network. BlackRock's unified scaled investment and risk management system that enables us to better manage clients' assets and scale our operations

Scale One of BlackRock's differentiators that enables us to create and deliver solutions more efficiently to clients and optimize growth for shareholders

Your solutions


At BlackRock, with 2/3 of the assets we manage related to retirement, it is our responsibility to assist people all over the world to live out their later years with dignity and security.

Your Goals Are Our Goals

BlackRock's combination of investment strategies and technology capabilities uniquely position us to help you attain your financial goals. We help institutions like pension funds and insurance companies close their asset-liability gaps; we help countries manage their wealth and build infrastructure for their citizens; and we help individuals save for retirement. 

Two-thirds of our assets are managed on behalf of people saving for retirement. With individuals living longer than ever before, we recognize the responsibility we have in helping them save for a dignified retirement. We are focused on leveraging our product breadth, technology tools and global insight to help people make their savings last for the duration of their retirement. 

We built LifePath®, the industry's first target date funds, to make investing for retirement easier by creating a fund that adjusts allocations to lower risk investments as retirement nears. LifePath is designed to help you close the gap between your current savings and the annual income you'll need to achieve the standard of living you want in retirement. 

We are creating digital tools to help financial advisors better serve their clients. iRetire®, for example, leverages BlackRock's Cost of Retirement Index ("CoRI®") to help you illustrate retirement income and develop a plan for closing the income gap. Aladdin Risk for Wealth Management helps financial advisors manage risk across their clients' portfolios and access multi-asset portfolio analytics. 

BlackRock's global thought leadership platform, BlackRock Retirement Institute ("BRI"), enables our clients and broader community to make better decisions about retirement and longevity.


Target Date Making investing for retirement easier by automatically adjusting allocations from maximizing growth potential to managing against downside risk as retirement nears

Your Partners


One BlackRock for you

Our global investment and technology platform is powered and used by our employees, who work tirelessly each day to serve you.

Since our founding, we have sought to attract talent from all around the world because we recognize the importance of having employees who reflect the clients we serve. Inclusion and diversity are key to our success and we believe the best solutions for clients and outcomes for people come from fully leveraging our diverse experiences, backgrounds and insights.

Our 14,000 employees work as One BlackRock to better serve you.

  • Aladdin, our technology platform, enables all of us to speak one common language
  • The BlackRock Investment Institute (“BII”) harnesses the power of collective intelligence across the firm to build a global knowledge sharing platform for ourselves, clients and the broader public
  • In 2017, we launched a series of “Knowing BlackRock” academies for employees to ensure that the firm’s principles and culture are institutionalized for the next generation

14,000 fiduciaries to clients

14,000 people passionate about performance

14,000 innovators

One BlackRock working together to fulfill our principles each day

Our Responsibility


To deliver the best outcomes for clients and shareholders, we must focus on the long term

Our responsibility is to help you achieve your goals. And that means we are committed to a long-term approach at the companies we invest in on your behalf and at BlackRock itself.

We advocate on your behalf for companies to adopt robust business practices to ensure sustainable long-term performance.

And we operate and invest in BlackRock with that same focus on the future.

2017 Corporate Responsibility Highlights

Human Capital

45% of new hires and
36% of senior leader new hires were female in 2017

Launched FTO, our flexible time off program, so employees are no longer held to a fixed number of days off per year

Governance and Board

5 female Directors
17/20 Directors are independent

Environmental Sustainability

We will be using 100% renewable energy in the US by the end of 2018 and globally by 2020

Total kWh (electricity) consumed globally has decreased by 12% since 2014 and has decreased by 26% per employee over the same period

Public Policy

Published 10 viewpoints on public policy issues and the implications for investors

Submitted nearly 50 comment letters in 2017 to policy makers

Risk Management

Augmented resourcing and oversight of Cyber Risk and Technology Risk as well as Third Party Risk

Global Public Policy Group BlackRock advocates for public policies that increase financial market transparency, protect investors and drive confidence in capital markets

BlackRock Investment Institute BII provides connectivity between our portfolio managers and insights to clients, policymakers and the public to keep you informed on macroeconomic, geopolitical and market events

30 years


80s
1988
BlackRock is founded
90s
1998
BlackRock opens its first international office in Edinburgh, Scotland
1999
BlackRock begins to sell *Aladdin* to clients
Nomura BlackRock Asset Management becomes the first joint money management venture between the US and Japanese firms
BlackRock makes its Initial Public Offering (“IPO”) on the New York Stock Exchange on October 1st at $14.00 per share
00s
2006
BlackRock acquires Merrill Lynch Investment Management, expanding its retail and international presence
2008
Head of NY Fed asks BlackRock to analyze Bear Stearns’ mortgage-backed securities assets and determine their value
2009
BlackRock acquires Barclays Global Investors (BGI) for $13.5bn, doubling AUM 
to $2.8tn and becoming the largest asset manager in the world, with more than 9,000 employees in 24 countries
2012
BlackRock launches *iShares* Core funds to provide investors with broad stock and bond market exposure at the foundation of their portfolios in a low-cost and tax-efficient way
2015
BlackRock acquires FutureAdvisor, a leader in technology-enabled advice capabilities, to enhance our digital wealth capabilities for distribution partners
2017
BlackRock extends *iRetire* technology beyond income planning to also managing the decumulation phase of retirement
2018
BlackRock launches Artificial Intelligence Lab in Palo Alto to accelerate how it uses artificial intelligence and associated disciplines — machine learning, data science, natural language processing — to improve outcomes and drive progress for investors, clients, and the firm