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SOURCE: Wikipedia, captured 2020-06-23
Brian Mulroney is associated with BlackRock (also: VS&A Communications Partners II LP - which acquired Phillips Business Information ...)
BlackRock, Inc. is an American global investment management corporation based in New York City. Founded in 1988, initially as a risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with $7.4 trillion in assets under management as of end-Q4 2019. BlackRock operates globally with 70 offices in 30 countries and clients in 100 countries. Due to its power, and the sheer size and scope of its financial assets and activities, BlackRock has been called the world's largest shadow bank.
BlackRock was founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, Robert S. Kapito, Susan Wagner, Barbara Novick, Ben Golub, Hugh Frater, Ralph Schlosstein, and Keith Anderson to provide institutional clients with asset management services from a risk management perspective. Fink, Kapito, Golub and Novick had worked together at First Boston, where Fink and his team were pioneers in the mortgage-backed securities market in the United States. During Fink's tenure, he had lost $100 million as head of First Boston. That experience was the motivation to develop what he and the others considered to be excellent risk management and fiduciary practices. Initially, Fink sought funding (for initial operating capital) from Pete Peterson of The Blackstone Group who believed in Fink's vision of a firm devoted to risk management. Peterson called it Blackstone Financial Management. In exchange for a 50 percent stake in the bond business, initially Blackstone gave Fink and his team a $5 million credit line. Within months, the business had turned profitable, and by 1989 the group's assets had quadrupled to $2.7 billion. The percent of the stake owned by Blackstone also fell to 40%, compared to Fink's staff.
By 1992, The Blackstone Group had a stake equating to about 35% of the company, and Schwarzman and Fink were considering selling shares to the public. The firm adopted the name BlackRock in 1992, and by the end of that year, BlackRock was managing $17 billion in assets. At the end of 1994, BlackRock was managing $53 billion. In 1994, Blackstone Group's Stephen A. Schwarzman and Fink had an internal dispute over methods of compensation and over equity. Fink wanted to share equity with new hires, to lure talent from banks, unlike Schwarzman, who did not want to further lower Blackstone's stake. They agreed to part ways, so the BlackRock partners (Sue Wagner) orchestrated a deal to sell part of the company. In June 1994, Blackstone sold a mortgage-securities unit with $23 billion in assets to PNC Bank Corp. for $240 million. The unit had traded mortgages and other fixed-income assets, and during the sales process the unit changed its name from Blackstone Financial Management to BlackRock Financial Management. Schwarzman remained with Blackstone, while Fink went on to become chairman and CEO of BlackRock Inc. In 1998, PNC's equity, liquidity, and mutual fund activities were merged into BlackRock.
BlackRock went public in 1999 at $14 a share on the New York Stock Exchange. By the end of 1999, BlackRock was managing $165 billion in assets. BlackRock grew both organically and by acquisition. In August 2004, BlackRock made its first major acquisition, buying State Street Research & Management's holding company SSRM Holdings, Inc. from MetLife for $325 million in cash and $50 million in stock. The acquisition raised BlackRock's assets under management from $314 billion to $325 billion. The deal included the mutual-fund business State Street Research & Management in 2005. BlackRock merged with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) in 2006, halving PNC's ownership and giving Merrill Lynch a 49.5% stake in the company. In October 2007, BlackRock acquired the fund-of-funds business of Quellos Capital Management.
The U.S. government contracted with BlackRock to help resolve the fallout of the financial meltdown of 2008. According to Vanity Fair, the financial establishment in Washington and on Wall Street believed BlackRock was the best choice for the job. In 2009, BlackRock first became the No. 1 asset manager worldwide. In April 2009, BlackRock acquired R3 Capital Management, LLC and took control of the $1.5 billion fund. On 12 June 2009, Barclays sold its Global Investors unit (BGI), which included its exchange traded fund business, iShares, to BlackRock for US$13.5 billion. Through the deal, Barclays attained a near-20% stake in BlackRock.
In 2010, Ralph Schlosstein, the CEO of Evercore Partners and a BlackRock founder, called BlackRock "the most influential financial institution in the world." On 1 April 2011, due to Sanofi's acquisition of Genzyme, BlackRock replaced it on the S&P 500 index.
In 2013, Fortune listed BlackRock on its annual list of the world's 50 Most Admired Companies. In 2014, The Economist said that BlackRock's $4 trillion under management made it the "world's biggest asset manager," and it was larger than the world's largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China with $3 trillion. In May of the same year, BlackRock invested in Snapdeal.
In December 2014 a BlackRock managing director in London was banned by the British Financial Conduct Authority for failing the "fit and proper" test, because he paid £43,000 to avoid prosecution for dodging train fares. BlackRock said, "Jonathan Burrows left BlackRock earlier this year. What he admitted to the FCA is totally contrary to our values and principles."
At the end of 2014, the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute reported that 65% of Blackrock's assets under management were made up of institutional investors.
By June 30, 2015, BlackRock had US$4.721 trillion of assets under management. On August 26, 2015, BlackRock entered into a definitive agreement to acquire FutureAdvisor, a digital wealth management provider with reported assets under management of $600 million. Under the deal, FutureAdvisor would operate as a business within BlackRock Solutions (BRS). BlackRock announced in November 2015 that they would wind down the BlackRock Global Ascent hedge fund after losses. The Global Ascent fund had been its only dedicated global macro fund, as BlackRock was "better known for its mutual funds and exchange traded funds." At the time, BlackRock managed $51 billion in hedge funds, with $20 billion of that in funds of hedge funds.
In March 2017, the Financial Times announced that BlackRock, after a six-month review led by Mark Wiseman, had initiated a restructuring of its $8bn actively-managed fund business, resulting in the departure of seven portfolio managers and a $25m charge in Q2, replacing certain funds with quantitative investment strategies. In May 2017, BlackRock increased its stake in both CRH plc and Bank of Ireland. By April 2017, iShares business accounted for $1.41tn, or 26 percent, of BlackRock's total assets under management, and 37 percent of BlackRock's base fee income. In April 2017, BlackRock backed the inclusion of mainland Chinese shares in MSCI's global index for the first time.
Between October and December 2018, BlackRock's assets dropped by US$468bn and fell below $6tn. It was the largest decline between quarters since September 2011.
As of 2019, BlackRock holds 4.81% of Deutsche Bank, making it the single largest shareholder. This investment goes back to at least 2016.
In May 2019, BlackRock received criticism for the environmental impact of its holdings. It is counted among the top three shareholders in every oil "supermajor" except Total, and it is among the top 10 shareholders in 7 of the 10 biggest coal producers.
In his 2020 annual open letter [local copy (html, captured 2020-10-23), CEO Fink announced environmental sustainability as core goal for BlackRock's future investment decisions. BlackRock disclosed plans to sell US$500 million in coal investments.
For the fiscal year 2017, BlackRock reported earnings of US$4.970 billion, with an annual revenue of US$12.491 billion, an increase of 12.0% over the previous fiscal cycle. BlackRock's shares traded at over $414 per share, and its market capitalization was valued at over US$61.7 billion in October 2018. As of 2018, BlackRock ranked 237 on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue.
| Year | Revenue (million US$) |
Net income (million US$) |
Total Assets (million US$) |
AUM (million US$) |
Price per Share (US$) |
Employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 1,191 | 234 | 1,848 | 62.85 | ||
| 2006 | 2,098 | 323 | 20,469 | 103.75 | ||
| 2007 | 4,845 | 993 | 22,561 | 128.69 | ||
| 2008 | 5,064 | 784 | 19,924 | 144.07 | ||
| 2009 | 4,700 | 875 | 178,124 | 136.79 | ||
| 2010 | 8,612 | 2,063 | 178,459 | 3,561,000 | 145.85 | |
| 2011 | 9,081 | 2,337 | 179,896 | 3,513,000 | 148.27 | |
| 2012 | 9,337 | 2,458 | 200,451 | 3,792,000 | 158.53 | |
| 2013 | 10,180 | 2,932 | 219,873 | 4,325,000 | 238.52 | 11,400 |
| 2014 | 11,081 | 3,294 | 239,792 | 4,651,895 | 289.80 | 12,200 |
| 2015 | 11,401 | 3,345 | 225,261 | 4,645,412 | 322.68 | 13,000 |
| 2016 | 12,261 | 3,168 | 220,177 | 5,147,852 | 334.16 | 13,000 |
| 2017 | 13,600 | 4,952 | 220,217 | 6,288,195 | 414.60 | 13,900 |
| 2018 | 14,198 | 4,305 | 159,573 | 5,975,818 | 14,900 |
BlackRock's largest division is iShares, a family of over 800 exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that comprises more than $1 trillion in assets under management. iShares is the largest provider of ETFs in the U.S. and in the world.
In 2000, BlackRock launched BlackRock Solutions, the analytics and risk management division of BlackRock, Inc. The division grew from the Aladdin System (which is the enterprise investment system), Green Package (which is the Risk Reporting Service) PAG (portfolio analytics) and AnSer (which is the interactive analytics). BlackRock Solutions (BRS) serves two roles within BlackRock. First, BlackRock Solutions is the in-house investment analytics and "process engineering" department for BlackRock which works with their portfolio management teams, risk and quantitative analysis, business operations and every other part of the firm that touches the investment process. Second, BlackRock Solutions (BRS) and the three primary divisions are services that offered to institutional clients. As of 2013, the platform had nearly 2,000 employees.
BlackRock differentiates itself from other asset managers by claiming its risk management is not separate. Risk management is the foundation and cornerstone of the firm's entire platform. Aladdin keeps track of 30,000 investment portfolios, including BlackRock's own along with those of competitors, banks, pension funds, and insurers. According to The Economist, as at December 2013, the platform monitors almost 7 percent of the world's $225 trillion of financial assets.
BlackRock Solutions was retained by the U. S. Treasury Department in May 2009 to manage the toxic mortgage assets (i.e. to analyze, unwind, and price) that were owned by Bear Stearns, AIG, Inc., Freddie Mac, Morgan Stanley, and other financial firms that were affected in the 2008 financial crisis.
In 2017, BlackRock expanded its presence in sustainable investing and environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) with new staff and products both in USA and Europe with the aim to lead the evolution of the financial sector in this regard.
BlackRock started using its weight to draw attention to environmental and diversity issues by means of official letters to CEOs and shareholder votes together with activist investors or investor networks like the Carbon Disclosure Project, which in 2017 backed a successful shareholder resolution for ExxonMobil to act on climate change. In 2018, it asked Russell 1000 companies to improve gender diversity on their board of directors if they had less than 2 women on them.
After discussions with firearms manufacturers and distributors, on April 5, 2018, BlackRock introduced two new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that exclude stocks of gun makers and large gun retailers, Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods, Kroger, Sturm Ruger, American Outdoor Brands Corporation, and Vista Outdoor, and removing the stocks from their seven existing environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) funds, in order "to provide more choice for clients seeking to exclude firearms companies from their portfolios."
Despite BlackRock's attempts to model itself as a sustainable investor, one report shows that BlackRock is the world's largest investor in coal plant developers, holding shares worth $11 billion among 56 coal plant developers. Another report shows that BlackRock owns more oil, gas, and thermal coal reserves than any other investor with total reserves amounting to 9.5 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions -- or 30 percent of total energy-related emissions from 2017. Concerned about global warming, environmental groups including the Sierra Club, and Amazon Watch launched a campaign called BlackRock's Big Problem in September 2018. In this campaign, these groups assert that BlackRock is the "biggest driver of climate destruction on the planet," due in part to its refusal to divest from fossil fuel companies. On January 10th, 2020 a group of climate activists rushed inside the Paris offices of Black Rock France painting walls and floors with warnings and accusations on the responsibility of the company in the current climate and social crises.
On January 14, 2020, BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink declared that environmental sustainability would be a key goal for investment decisions. BlackRock announced that it would sell $500 million worth of coal-related assets, and create funds that would avoid fossil-fuel stocks, two moves that would drastically shift the company's investment policy. Environmentalist Bill McKibben called this a "huge, if not final, win for activists."
In his 2018 annual letter to shareholders, BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink stated that other CEOs should be aware of their impact on society. Anti-war organizations were discontent with Fink's statement, because BlackRock is the largest investor in weapon manufacturers through its iShares U.S. Aerospace and Defense ETF.
In May 2018, anti-war organizations held a demonstration outside the annual BlackRock shareholder's meeting in Manhattan, New York.
SOURCE: BlackRockGRP.com, captured 2020-09-04
This page last modified: 2020-09-04 11:04:54 -0700 (PST)
Not to be confused with: theBlackRock.group
Carl Forti has nearly 20 years of experience in politics, campaign strategy, media relations and public affairs. He is a seasoned political operative, having served in leadership positions at advocacy organizations, a presidential campaign and four election cycles at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
Carl has been described as "one of the smartest people in politics you've never heard of" by Karl Rove and "the Alexander the Great of the Republican independent expenditure world."
While at BlackRock, Carl develops campaign strategies for the nation's most successful issue advocacy groups, third-party organizations and SuperPACs. Previously, Carl was Executive Vice President for Issue Advocacy at Freedom's Watch, an organization that was a strong voice for conservatives and impacted the public policy debate at local and national levels.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Carl served as Deputy Campaign Manager and Political Director for Romney for President, where he built and managed the national political operation that produced 11 primary or caucus victories.
Carl also has extensive experience on Capitol Hill. He served in numerous capacities at the National Republican Congressional Committee, including Communications Director and Issue Advocacy Director, where he managed an $80 million independent expenditure campaign.
Originally from Western New York and a graduate of the George Washington University, Carl resides in Alexandria, VA with his wife Sandy and their three children.
Michael Dubke [<< Wikipedia] is a veteran GOP operative and has been involved in local, state and federal politics, as well as issue and public policy advocacy since 1992. His experience has brought him a unique understanding of the relationship between media strategy and public policy development.
Mike recently served as Assistant to the President for Communications in the White House. In that capacity, he oversaw a communications department that coordinated Congressional and Cabinet communications, Digital Strategy, Media Affairs, Production, Strategic communications as well and Surrogate operations.
In 2009, Mike was a Founding Partner at the Black Rock Group (BRG). At BRG, Mike has helped plan and lead successful communications and advocacy efforts in a variety of industries including energy, technology, transportation, financial services, restaurant and retail. In the non-profit realm, Mike has worked to promote digital security, eradicate child sex-trafficking, foster international dialogue and keep kids safe online.
In 2001, Mike founded a group of media services firms (Main Street Media Group, Crossroads Media and Herd Media) that have collectively placed almost $1 billion dollars of media for clients. The firms specialize in advertising strategy and placement for political candidates, issue advocacy organizations and trade associations. The media group has established itself as one of the go-to firms on the national scene for both political candidates and corporations.
Mike also served as President of Americans for Job Security (AJS), a pioneer independent expenditure organization that provided direct advocacy for citizens to public policy makers. Prior to co-founding AJS, he held the position of Executive Director for both the Ripon Society and the Ripon Educational Fund, where he oversaw the growth of the TransAtlantic Conference and the re-emergence of the Ripon Society as a participant in national politics. Mike began his career on the Bush/Quayle '92 campaign as assistant to the Political Director.
Mike currently serves on the board of the Franklin Center for Public Policy Exchange and the Ripon Society. He is a graduate of Hamilton College and resides in Alexandria, VA with his wife Shannon and their two children.
The Black Rock Group (BRG) is a strategic communications and public affairs firm led by Michael Dubke, Carl Forti, Brian Jones and Christopher Maloney.
Located in Alexandria, VA, BRG creates and executes public policy, political, and strategic communications campaigns. Our team works collaboratively with clients to shape public debates through paid, earned and digital media strategies.
The Black Rock Group (BRG) is a strategic communications and public affairs firm led by Michael Dubke, Carl Forti, Brian Jones and Chris Maloney. We have a proven track record of creating effective public policy, political and strategic communications campaigns. Our team works collaboratively with clients to shape public debates through paid, earned and digital media strategies. Founded by two Western New York natives, our firm has deep connections to the Buffalo area, including the historic Black Rock neighborhood.
Why BRG? "BRG is an independent company. We don't report to a corporate office or shareholders. We answer only to you. We pride ourselves on an aggressive campaign-style approach, tailored for our clients' unique needs, that is ultimately focused on measuring and achieving results."
Strategic Communications & Story Telling
No matter the goal, the experts at BRG can help you navigate an ever-changing communications marketplace. From start to finish, we will work to develop and execute a communications plan that helps to elevate your brand or issue by delivering key messages to targeted audiences.
This includes, but is not limited to, message development, media strategy, reporter outreach/interviews, content creation, media monitoring and rapid response.
Public Policy Campaigns
BRG is unique because of our experience devising and executing campaigns that influence public policy. Whether you have an issue that needs to be pushed to the forefront of the national debate, or if you're looking to build a coalition to move your cause forward, we can help. BRG has run successful advocacy campaigns at the national, state and local level.
Winning advocacy campaigns demand more than lobbying. Some efforts may call for a megaphone, others a surgical strike to motivate a specific group of consumers. Whatever your needs, BRG will work with you to build an integrated communications campaign to accomplish your objective and ensure you're heard by the people who matter.
Campaign Consulting
BRG brings together some of the brightest minds from the independent expenditure and campaign worlds. Our partners and staff have years of experience running presidential, Senate, House and gubernatorial campaigns, as well as working in leadership positions at the campaign committees. We understand exactly what goes into a winning race.
If you are a candidate running for public office, BRG can help guide your campaign to success. This includes strategic planning, message development, media relations, debate preparation, media monitoring and rapid response, as well as day-to-day operations.
Media Training & Reputation Management
Talking on the phone to a reporter can be intimidating, never mind appearing on TV or at a press conference with 15 TV cameras. The key to any successful media campaign is being a successful spokesperson.
The team at BRG has trained presidential candidates, members of Congress, CEOs and heads of nonprofit groups in the art of interviewing and public speaking. We can put together a program tailored specifically to your needs, dealing with everything from preparing for the interview to delivering key messages to building awareness of your body language and answering the tough questions.
Crisis Management & Avoidance
There's one truth about a crisis -- no matter who you are or what business your company is in -- a crisis can happen at any moment. Expected or unexpected, small fires can quickly blossom into media firestorms or industry meltdowns. Our experience in presidential, congressional and local campaigns, and in the private sector has shown us the best way to navigate through a crisis. We can help you every step of the way to ensure a strong and appropriate response, and in many cases we can help mitigate the effects of a crisis before it begins.
Digital
Nearly every campaign needs a strong and integrated digital component to disseminate and amplify key messages. We can help you develop an online presence, and build and manage your social media accounts. Using the latest digital tools and deploying proven social media strategies, BRG has the expertise and relationships to connect you with online audiences.
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