BlackRock

Spear’s Review

American multinational investment company BlackRock is one of the world’s leading providers of investment, advisory and risk management solutions, with 78 offices in 36 countries.

With a mandate to ‘make investing work for more people’, BlackRock’s clients include individuals and families, financial advisers, family offices, educational and nonprofit organisations, pension plans, insurance companies and governments.

A leading provider of financial technology – its Aladdin operating system is used by hundreds of firms to gain clarity around investment portfolios – BlackRock also sees stewardship as core to its role as a fiduciary and asset manager, and so engages with boards and management teams, and votes as a shareholder on clients’ behalf, to help deliver durable, long-term returns. It is also the largest provider of exchange-traded funds worldwide via iShares.

Company Profile

In an increasingly complex world, investment insights and connections matter more than ever to uncover investment opportunities, understand portfolio risks and stay abreast of innovation across asset classes.  

As a trusted fiduciary, we provide family offices curated access to the full spectrum of BlackRock capabilities, with investment strategies across all asset classes, risk management and technology solutions. 

Our dedicated global family office team understands the nuances of managing family wealth and the challenges of balancing current needs with future ones. The team delivers a highly tailored service, designing investment strategies, solutions and analytics to help our clients meet their investment objectives. 

Alternative investments 

Alternative strategies play an increasingly critical role in family office portfolios. In our recent Family Office survey, allocations to alternatives (39 per cent) exceeded allocations to public equities (37 per cent), with 84 per cent of respondents citing higher return potential as the reason to invest in alternative assets (BlackRock Family Office Survey 2022-2023, January 2023). 

Our platform is designed to deliver solutions that offer unique sources of return across a range of investment asset classes including private equity, private credit, hedge funds, infrastructure and real estate. 

We believe the need for an approach to alternative investing that is scalable, disciplined, technology-enabled and transparent has never been greater. Which is why we recently agreed to acquire Preqin, a preeminent private markets technology and data provider, as a step towards transforming private markets. For family offices, it signifies a future where data, technology and strategic insights converge to unlock new investment opportunities. 

Equities 

Family offices seeking resilient long-term capital appreciation and/or exposure to specific sectors in their diversified portfolio often look for investment opportunities across BlackRock’s extensive equity platform. 

Our fundamental and systematic equity strategies offer family office investors curated access to global markets and key investment insights. BlackRock’s equity investors and researchers combine company-specific research, innovative proprietary modelling and industry analysis to provide clients with insights that aim to deliver consistent, differentiated outperformance. 

Fixed income 

Family offices seeking to achieve positive returns with historically lower risk than other asset classes are utilising fixed income strategies within their broader portfolio. We help family office investors navigate the entire fixed income spectrum – taxable and tax-exempt, active and index, public to private, fundamental and systematic – to help deliver better outcomes, convenience, value and transparency. 

Cash management 

Our clients need effective cash management solutions that consider anticipated liquidity needs, inflows from operating businesses and personal expenditure, while offering the potential for an enhanced yield profile, hedged against risk. 

BlackRock offers investment strategies and vehicles such as money market accounts (MMAs), short-duration strategies, ETFs and separately managed accounts (SMAs) to deliver on a family office’s individual liquidity needs. 

Outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO) 

As family offices face in-house resource constraints and increasingly complex responsibilities, using an outsourced investment team is a cost-effective and consistent solution. 

At BlackRock, we offer fully bespoke, discretionary solutions which leverage the firm’s scale, insights and global reach across all asset classes. We can serve as the investment arm for a family office or as an extension of their investment team, providing institutional quality single-asset, multi-asset or whole portfolio solutions. 

Our family office clients get access to the very best of BlackRock’s investment platform and technology. All portfolios are managed on Aladdin, our market leading technology and risk system which ensures we spend our time managing risk, not calculating it. 

Every portfolio is purposely designed to deliver the unique investment objectives of our family office clients, managed by our dedicated CIOs who have firsthand experience working in family offices. 

As an investment partner to some of the most sophisticated investors in the world, we understand what drives investment success.