Dear Client,
We are excited to share with you the biggest transformation of BlackRock in fifteen years.
We are making these changes to support you and your evolving investment, portfolio, and business needs. These changes include:
- Organizing to make client needs, not product structure, the central axis of how we deliver ideas, products, and solutions to you;
- Uniting the four growth regions outside the Americas in a new International group; and
- Acquiring Global Infrastructure Partners, which will position BlackRock as a global leader in delivering infrastructure capabilities to you.
Three client needs have driven these changes.
- The new ways clients are assembling portfolios. Clients everywhere are rethinking their whole portfolios and asset allocations after the rate shocks of 2022-2023. They are looking for ideas and tools that cut across traditional wrappers: individual securities, separate accounts, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, private markets vehicles. The lines across these product structures are also blurring. The ETF revolution continues to accelerate, with clients increasingly favoring ETFs in place of mutual funds or individual securities (e.g., bonds) for long-term exposures, hedging, and tactical positions. To help our clients meet their objectives across asset classes and product boundaries, we’re creating a unified Global Product Solutions business, led by Stephen Cohen. This group will consolidate the iShares business alongside product management of all our other investment offerings.
- A diverse set of growing markets outside the Americas. Clients in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Asia Pacific present a diverse set of local investment needs, united by broad growth in the capital markets and availability of investment choices. To match our global scale to these distinct markets, we are forming a new International group consisting of four sub-regions (Europe, India, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific). Rachel Lord will lead this group.
- The growth of infrastructure as an asset class in our clients’ portfolios. Clients are looking for assets to match their long-dated liabilities. In parallel, companies and governments in developed and emerging markets need to invest huge sums of capital across new economy infrastructure (e.g., data centers, logistics hubs, renewables, electricity grids) and traditional infrastructure (e.g., ports, airports, traditional energy). With governments everywhere facing fiscal constraints and demographic pressures, private capital is needed like never before. We are therefore excited to announce the acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP). We will combine GIP with BlackRock’s complementary infrastructure platform. This combined platform will be a world leader with the scale, corporate connectivity, and investment and operating expertise to meet our clients’ challenges. To learn more, please click here.
We are grateful for your partnership and look forward to helping you meet your investment objectives.
