Rick Rieder

I'm Rick Rieder, Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income for BlackRock. I help the firm manage its fixed income investments around the world.

I think we're going through a technology revolution, the likes of which nobody's ever seen before. People point to technology in prior generations, like vehicles or railroad, very different forms of technology. Now we're seeing movement of data at such rapid speeds that's creating efficiencies around the world and doing things in much more efficient manner than anything we've ever seen before. People talk about productivity in the world, that you're not seeing the level of productivity that, uh, that we should expect in this economy and I actually think it's the exact opposite. You're seeing productivity enhancements for things we used to do much faster, much more efficiently, eliminating waste. You look at things like energy and how we consume energy and how it's produced. And we now have supply/demand equilibrium like we've never had before and consumption is at lower levels because of how economical we are around energy. Changing energy, changing mobile telephony, changing banking and services we do on our, on our phones. Incredible efficiencies, the likes of which you've never seen before, that is mis-measured by traditional economic data and is something that I think is, is happening faster than anybody gives credit to and I think will continue to do so over the coming years.

Where cash flow is generated, how it's generated, what countries generate it, what types of companies do it is, is literally (inaudible) happening in lightspeed like nothing we've ever seen.

BlackRock is a company that is unique to the financial services industry in so many ways. It is a firm that has so many resources around the world that allows us to think about investments in different ways. Allows us to collaborate around the world about ideas, and things that are changing in different regions of the world, different industries. Debt markets versus equity markets versus commodity markets. And allows you to sit and think about things in different ways, and because of all the resources, because of all the research, because of world-class technology, world-class analytics - allows you to manage money in a more efficient way. And I've said this before. If you have the best research in the world, and the best communication in the world, and the best technology and analytics - and something you strive for, can you put all of these things together in a way that's unique in the marketplace and do it for your clients efficiently, be a fiduciary to your clients in terms of creating the best return for them possible because you have so many ideas and information and technology to bring to the floor to do it efficiently.