blackrock

A BlackRock survey of institutional investors has found the growing appetite for private markets is dampened only by liquidity concerns. Meanwhile, its strategists warn that the efficacy of the classic 60/40 portfolio is waning.

Political polarization in the United States and new regulations affecting the labelling of products and funds means boutique ESG managers are back in the spotlight.

The market view is still too optimistic, according to the BlackRock Investment Institute, and investors aren’t truly considering the risk of a recession.

The end of supportive monetary policy is bringing wild market volatility with it, and the old impulse to “buy the dip” will no longer be rewarded.

The rivers of gold that have flowed over the last decade have not flowed to more innovative products, according to Boston Consulting Group.

BlackRock has flagged an ESG-lite agenda ahead of the 2022 corporate proxy-voting season.

Regulators won’t be able to scrub out environmental, social and governance (ESG) ‘greenwashing’ in the investment industry, according to influential US finance academic, Aswath Damodaran. In a blistering attack on the ESG investing sector last month, Damodaran says greenwashing – or falsely marketing funds as sustainable (or the like) – is an indelible feature of…

Fifteen years ago, Thomas Friedman said that globalisation had finally made the world “flat” and that a golden age of prosperity was upon us. A month ago, that stopped being true. Love him or loathe him (and many lean towards the latter), Thomas Friedman occasionally hits the nail on the head. In his 2005 book…

As merger activity continues apace, State Street – armed with its “unique” front-to-back solution – intends to take a dominant position as custodian of choice for the biggest end of town. The super industry and its custodians are now exiting a period of relative stability. The number of funds has more than halved in the…

Plenty of big super funds have announced their intention to dump their Russian assets, and the government wants them to. But saying do svidanya is harder than they thought. From a certain angle, there’s a lot of Russia in the super system. Once ruled by unapologetic socialists, they’ve both become capitalistic in the aftermath of…