Book Tip No. 19 (2016): BlackRock: A Secret World Power Grabs Our Money

Frankfurt/New York 2015.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to ask the CEO of a financial institution how much capital he estimated BlackRock managed. The answer was: Several billion USD. This estimate was 1000 times too low: BlackRock manages 4.6 trillion USD in its funds, and 14 trillion USD are transacted through BlackRock’s trading analyses and platforms. BlackRock is involved in all DAX companies. This is reason enough to deal more closely with their company, its business behavior, and its strategy. Heike Buchter describes the emergence and the extremely aggressive and very successful growth strategy of BlackRock. She describes how BlackRock was able to profit from the financial crisis of 2007/2008, how BlackRock became the market-leading global player in ETFs, what conflicts of interest BlackRock gets into when advising governments on the restructuring of the banking and financial sector, and what information advantage BlackRock builds up because 20,000 investment portfolios are managed via their platform. Anyone who cares about the further development of our economic and financial system must deal with BlackRock. Heike Buchter’s book is an absolute “must”, even if she could have done without one or the other journalistic formulation at some points. The comprehensive background material and its preparation make the book extremely worth reading.