BlackRock is a financial giant. It's the largest investor on planet Earth with over $9 trillion in assets. That's a pile of cash equal to about one-tenth of a year's global economic activity.
That means the money managers at BlackRock have a big say in how the world runs. Here's CEO Larry Fink talking to CNBC in 2021. And I've been on your show now probably four times every year at the very least for 22 years as a public company and even longer when we were private
這意味著貝萊德的基金經理對世界的運作方式有很大的發言權。這是執行長 Larry Fink 在 2021 年接受 CNBC 採訪時說的話。作為一家上市公司，我每年至少上您的節目四次，已經 22 年了，如果算上我們還是私人公司的時候，時間就更長了
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talking about retirement. BlackRock is indeed influential. In the US it owns at least 5% of most major companies. That gives the firm lots of voting power to determine how public businesses operate. BlackRock rose to the top of the financial system in a short span of time. After its IPO
in 1999, its stock has increased 7,539% through December 2020. Along the way the company used technology to minimize the risks of investing. BlackRock as well as the other ETF providers have done a great job in bringing a product to investors that provides diversification
and investment portfolios at a relatively inexpensive price. And I think there's good reasons for them having grown to scale. According to BlackRock, risk management today means adapting to the changing climate. The largest oil and gas producers and the largest carbon emitters
are state controlled enterprises. Their leadership has the sway to push global institutions into action.
都是國有企業。他們的領導層有能力推動全球機構採取行動。
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BlackRock's relation to the Fed is a really useful thing for the public to know about.
貝萊德與聯準會的關係對公眾來說是非常有用的資訊。
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The central bank can do things to make our lives better and it can do with stuff to make some people really rich. Here's how BlackRock shot to the top of the financial industry.
The company we know today is BlackRock was formed in the late 1980s. A young Larry Fink launched a firm under the Blackstone Investment Group with seven co-founders.
我們今天所知的貝萊德公司成立於 1980 年代後期。年輕的 Larry Fink 與七位共同創辦人一起在黑石投資集團旗下創立了一家公司。
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Fink's team came together under the management of Steve Schwartzman.
Fink 的團隊在 Steve Schwartzman 的管理下組建。
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We started the business together around 1988-89 and they wanted to sell it four or five years later.
我們大約在 1988-89 年一起創業，他們想在四五年後將其出售。
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After the sale, BlackRock spent years developing a risk management software that they call Aladdin.
出售後，貝萊德花費數年時間開發了一款他們稱之為 Aladdin 的風險管理軟體。
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Aladdin uses a Monte Carlo-styled algorithm to uncover scenarios in which an investment could fail. Over the last really 20 years, financial markets have become much more complex, volumes have increased exponentially. At the same time, we've had an explosion in computing power,
chips have become so much more powerful and inexpensive. The combination of financial markets needing increased technology and there being cheap and expensive ways to really scale up technological innovations has led to sort of a confluence of things, things like cryptocurrencies,
晶片變得更加強大且便宜。
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robo-advisors, and even more basic things simply like equity markets being almost completely electronic now. BlackRock's tech-driven approach made it a major firm. Over time, their managed assets swelled and the company started to buy out its competitors.
In 2006, the firm required the distressed assets of Merrill Lynch and in 2009, it took over Barclays' global investors. At the time, BGI owned the intellectual property rights of iShares.
Today, that brand is one of the most heavily traded names in the stock market. About three million shares of its fund tracking the S&P 500 are exchanged every day. ETFs or exchange-traded funds are at the heart of BlackRock's empire. These funds have taken over
investing in the past decade. I think we can attest that growth to the attraction of ETFs as pulled investment vehicles that allow investors to diversify their portfolio and diversification
has been shown to be one of the key factors for investors to have a successful investment program.
已被證明是投資者擁有成功投資計劃的關鍵因素之一。
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You can think of ETFs as baskets of stocks based on themes. For example, BlackRock offers funds tied to corporations and small towns. They also issue funds that track oil and gas exploration and the defense industry. ETFs give investors a wide range of holdings at a low cost.
And just to give a sense of how low those costs can go, let's take, for example, BlackRock's S&P 500 exchange-traded fund. BlackRock is charging investors 30 cents a year on every thousand
dollars invested. And there's great competition among fund providers for low fees and that's been a great thing for investors. Just three companies dominate the ETF market. BlackRock is by far the largest with roughly a 35% market share of domestic market. The next two are Vanguard and
State Street, both somewhere and say the 15 to 20% market share range. ETFs reshaped financial markets in a short amount of time. More than 80% of all assets invested over the past decade have gone to one of the big three, according to legal scholars writing in the National Bureau
道富（State Street），兩者都約在15%到20%的市佔率範圍內。ETF在短時間內重塑了金融市場。根據在美國國家經濟研究局（National Bureau of Economic Research）撰文的法律學者指出，過去十年中，超過80%的投資資產都流向了這三大公司之一。
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of Economic Research. Experts say the financial and technology industries lend themselves to concentration. Competing S&P 500 index funds, they're all holding essentially the same portfolio.
And so they're all going to earn essentially the same return before costs. So from the investor's perspective, the best thing to do is to buy the one that passes through the least amount of expense to you. And because of economies of scale, that's generally going to be the largest fund.
BlackRock's popularity grew alongside the explosion of interest and passive investing.
貝萊德的受歡迎程度隨著對被動式投資興趣的激增而增長。
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In addition to individual wealth, BlackRock manages sovereign wealth funds and has a burgeoning private equities division. The company is also a lender to emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere.
78% of the firm's revenue is derived from investment advisory fees collected from products like ETFs, which is why you might have read articles about BlackRock or seen their leadership on TV. So this letter you think is the most important letter you've ever
written. More and more clients are looking for a more sustainable portfolio to be more prepared.
寫過的。越來越多的客戶正在尋求更具永續性的投資組合，以做好更充分的準備。
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Areas that are more impacted by climate change is going to have a harder time to finance their debt if they don't focus on the impact of climate change in their district and their region and their cities. BlackRock today is positioning itself as a socially conscious voice of the
financial industry. You might hear their leadership talk about ESG. So it stands for environmental, social and governance. And the idea is that there are specific issues, whether it has to do with climate change or whether it has to do with boardroom diversity
or whether it has to do with how your board of directors is constituted. Generally, that are important issues for investors. One of the central components of BlackRock's plan is to issue funds with stricter ESG standards on business conduct.
That's a form of active management and it has the same downside as any form of active management, which is it's not clear that it can outperform the performance of a broad market index.
But of course, that's not really the sales pitch. The sales pitch to investors is these companies share your values. BlackRock's leadership believes that these societal issues will impact the bottom line over the long term. Consider that BlackRock owns a 6.7% stake in the oil and gas
company ExxonMobil. ExxonMobil alone is responsible for nearly 2% of global emissions, according to an open secrets analysis of climate data. BlackRock says it raised climate concerns with Exxon in 2020 over a series of shareholder meetings. It joined a group of activists and
its peers to push three board members out in 2021.
其同業組成的團體，在2021年推動罷免了三名董事會成員。
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But there's a look at the three new directors. This really is reflective of just the changes in frankly capitalism in terms of the importance of ESG, even from a profitability standpoint or a standpoint of giving up some profitability to get your business in a different place with the prospect that you will ultimately benefit. Exxon now says it will end routine
flaring of natural gas by 2030 and disclose more climate-related risks.
到2030年停止常規天然氣燃燒，並披露更多與氣候相關的風險。
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The tighter standards on public corporations may help, but they also could push polluting activity and risky assets into more loosely monitored private ownership.
對上市公司更嚴格的標準可能會有幫助，但它們也可能將污染活動和高風險資產推向監管更寬鬆的私人所有權。
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Even a company like BlackRock that is investing in the entire S&P 500 is only investing in a very small part of, for example, fossil fuel production.
即使像貝萊德這樣投資於整個標普500指數的公司，也只投資於例如化石燃料生產中非常小的一部分。
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The largest oil and gas producers and the largest carbon emitters are state-controlled enterprises that are really not amenable to any pressure from U.S. money managers.
最大的石油和天然氣生產商以及最大的碳排放者都是國營企業，它們實際上不受美國基金經理任何壓力的影響。
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BlackRock has acknowledged that there's a chance that the green transition will push up prices and political tensions worldwide. Big public companies and banks are now being cast as a role of an admission police. Having the cut-off businesses are lending to companies,
often smaller companies that have not yet reduced their own admissions. This will have the unintended consequences of fueling a backlash against our big companies and it will promote a narrative big versus small and will create greater and greater political polarization.
BlackRock's call for better stewardship of society was first heard in the European Union.
貝萊德呼籲更好地管理社會，這項呼籲最初是在歐盟聽到的。
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The investment manager has a by-line on the group's framework for sustainable investment.
這家投資管理公司在該集團的永續投資框架中佔有一席之地。
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Regulators in the U.S. are focused on climate risk too.
美國的監管機構也關注氣候風險。
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So we view climate-related financial risk as a risk that falls under our existing mandates really into bank supervision and financial stability. And what we're doing at a high level is we're undertaking a broad plan of careful analysis, significant public engagement, and great
transparency regarding our role in addressing climate-related financial risks.
透明地說明我們在應對氣候相關金融風險方面的作用。
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In past times of crisis, the Federal Reserve System has asked BlackRock for help managing funds.
在過去的危機時期，聯邦儲備系統曾向貝萊德尋求資金管理方面的幫助。
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The Federal Reserve has gone to BlackRock for particular services that BlackRock is good at.
聯準會曾向貝萊德尋求貝萊德擅長的特定服務。
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Now those programs were unprecedented and unusual, but it's not abnormal for the Fed to be buying services from companies. In 2008, New York Federal Reserve leader Timothy Geithner tapped BlackRock to manage the distressed assets of Bear Stearns and AIG. Geithner and Fink share
a close personal relationship. The two sit on the board of the Council of Foreign Relations and were communicating frequently in the Great Recession. This pushed the money managers into the national spotlight. And in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the Fed system called on BlackRock again. In the following months, the Central Bank purchased trillions of dollars in
various assets and debts, including corporate bonds. BlackRock was tapped to manage this portion of the purchases. Experts warned that BlackRock's work with the Fed could raise conflicts of interest.
What's unusual here is that the top most people at the Federal Reserve are talking with the leader of the biggest asset management firm, and that in these moments of crisis, we're just going to this firm, not necessarily all other firms.
The company's 2020 annual report warns that their importance could lead to more oversight from the Fed. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the standards on acquisitions and mergers, which could impact the bottom lines of mutual funds. And the Securities and Exchange
Commission is reviewing derivatives markets, which could impact BlackRock too. The company is now searching for new sources of yield. For example, BlackRock is pursuing real estate investments, like student housing, apartments, retail, and office buildings. The firm also opened a lab in
Palo Alto to explore artificial intelligence. It's even dabbling in cryptocurrency, but leadership thinks that it's a little more than a footnote. The amount of conversations we're having on climate risk and how they should navigate portfolios is a major component of the conversation.
The conversations about our deficits and the conversations we're now having on inflation risk is far more dominant with our clients worldwide than the whole conversation about crypto. BlackRock is focused on the long term. It oversees trillions of dollars in assets
for a reason. Leaders and the public choose to trust them with their money.
這是有原因的。領導者和公眾選擇信任他們管理自己的資金。
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One of the things about technology is, if you get it right, you're really successful, because technology helps you scale at low cost. But there's no guarantee that their ESG plans will succeed. The SEC's mission and the mission of anyone who manages money for investors
is to protect those investors. The question is whether using ESG factors actually helps them to do that. Just saying ESG is good for our portfolio companies doesn't make it so.
