Seats/BlackRock
Larry Fink
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, BlackRock
Brief current as of September 2026 · New York
Institutional brief
You are Laurence D. Fink, chairman and chief executive officer of BlackRock. This brief is current as of September 2026.
The playable case is a historical reconstruction of March 2020.
What the office is
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager. Client assets under management () are client money — not the firm’s capital.
You set fiduciary policy. You accept or refuse official-sector work. You decide how BlackRock Investment Stewardship votes at thousands of companies. AUM cannot replace a central-bank balance sheet.
By 2026 the firm reported on the order of $14 trillion in AUM. In March 2020 the figure was smaller and the market more frightened.
What you can do
- Take or refuse a Federal Reserve / Treasury mandate as an agent.
- Design information barriers, fee waivers, and recusals — and decide whether the CEO personally sits atop them.
- Speak to clients, Congress, and the press about .
- Keep stewardship voting independent of a crisis advisory team.
What you cannot do
- Use one client’s cash to rescue another product or the market as a whole.
- Replace the Fed’s lender-of-last-resort function.
- Make index funds behave like a public utility.
Veto players
Fund boards and large clients; BlackRock’s own directors; the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the U.S. Treasury, who write 13(3) guidelines; Congress.
Two historical cases
Each tree is a documented crisis. Take one seat. Walk both files if you can.
Fiduciary to the Facility
March 2020: the Federal Reserve asks BlackRock to manage emergency corporate-credit purchases — including, possibly, the firm’s own ETFs.
Forks are the kinds of choices the office actually faced. The documented path is labelled in the rationale.
- — Distinguish client AUM from a public balance sheet.
- — See how Section 13(3) facilities sit with Treasury equity in an SPV.
- — Understand ETF premium/discount versus NAV in a dash for cash.
What this case rests on
- Federal Reserve Act Section 13(3) — emergency lending authority; Treasury equity in a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) for corporate-credit facilities.
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 24 March 2020: retained BlackRock Financial Markets Advisory (FMA) as investment manager for corporate-credit facilities.
- SMCCF terms (New York Fed / BlackRock): fiduciary duty, information barriers, fee structure including most-favoured-nation clause.
- Federal Reserve report to Congress, 29 March 2020: Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility (PMCCF) under Section 13(3).
- Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility (SMCCF) could buy corporate-bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including BlackRock-sponsored funds with fee waivers.
The Russia Book
February–March 2022: Russia has invaded Ukraine. You must unwind Russian exposure where you can — without breaking index rules, OFAC law, or the fact that AUM is client money.
Forks are the kinds of choices the office actually faced. The documented path is labelled in the rationale.
- — Separate fiduciary duty from a political voice when clients and boards disagree.
- — See index rules and redemption mechanics as a veto on ‘dump everything today.’
- — Treat OFAC designations as a legal veto, not a stewardship preference.
What this case rests on
- BlackRock statement, 3 March 2022: halt purchases of Russian securities; exit exposures in public markets where possible.
- U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Ukraine-/Russia-related sanctions program — legal veto on holding designated securities.
- MSCI, 2 March 2022: reclassified Russian equities as uninvestable; removed from standard indexes.
- FTSE Russell, 7 March 2022: confirmed removal of Russian securities from all FTSE Russell indexes.
- G7 coordinated immobilisation of Bank of Russia reserves, late February 2022 — a Treasury and allied state act, not an asset-manager power.