Rock and roll

16 April 2020 By Anna Szymanski Follow @Three_Guineas

Larry Fink’s investment giant just shed $1 trln of client assets, but its ETFs survived their first big test and tech investment paid dividends. A gig helping the Fed will further increase its influence. BlackRock could emerge from Covid-19 stronger – if also more scrutinized.

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BlackRock reported $806 million of earnings for the first quarter of 2020, a 23% decrease on the same period a year earlier.

The value of the assets it manages fell by around $1 trillion over three months.

The asset management firm run by Larry Fink reported $6.5 trillion of assets under management at the end of March, against $7.4 trillion at the end of 2019. Just over $900 billion of the decrease came from price changes.

BlackRock made a $589 million charitable donation during the quarter. Stripping out that and other one-off factors, earnings for the quarter fell 2% year-on-year to $1 billion.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has asked BlackRock to advise it on the purchase of tens of billions of dollars of securities in an attempt to stabilize the bond market, in light of disruptions caused by the spread of the new coronavirus.

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