BlackRock
Dear colleagues, Thank you for all that you’ve done this past year in a rapidly changing environment. Clients have entrusted BlackRock to manage more assets than any other manager in the world, and it is clear clients want to do even more with us. Adapting to seize opportunities is what has made BlackRock an industry leader.
We enter 2024 with significant momentum. Our client relationships have never been stronger. More and more of our clients are looking to consolidate their portfolios with BlackRock. As rates stabilize, we are seeing clients re-risking and repositioning portfolios as we have long anticipated. We are delivering strong investment performance and that, combined with our unique technology and operational excellence, is generating momentum across our private markets, OCIO, ETF and Aladdin businesses, among others.
At the same time, we see our industry changing faster than at any time since the founding of BlackRock. Thanks in large part to the outstanding work of our iShares team – ETFs are becoming ubiquitous as the preferred vehicle for delivering both index and active investment strategies. Growth is coming from a wider range of markets around the world than ever before – across Europe, the Middle East, India, and other markets in Asia. And, perhaps most profound, new technologies are poised to transform our industry – and every other industry. They will help us to find new sources of alpha, enhance service to our clients, create additional growth engines for Aladdin, and achieve significant efficiencies in how we operate.
All of this presents us with unprecedented opportunities. As a growth company, it is vital that we continually challenge ourselves and ask how we can best prepare for those opportunities. We must have the best talent in the industry. We need to be agile and efficient in how we serve our clients and how we manage our resources. We must leverage technology, and we must redeploy people and resources where the client needs are greatest and the opportunities for growth the most promising.
As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources. These changes will result in about 3% of our colleagues leaving BlackRock. These departures include valued friends and colleagues who have made important contributions to the firm, and we wish them our best for the future. Even with these changes, by the end of 2024, we expect to have a larger workforce as we continue adding people and building capabilities to support key areas of growth.
Saying goodbye to colleagues is hard, especially when many are friends as well. But it is done with the important purpose of best positioning the firm for a new environment and serving the evolving needs of our clients.
We are proud of all that BlackRock achieved in 2023 and excited about what lies ahead for us in 2024. By remaining ambitious in how we evolve to serve our clients and operate the firm, we will continue to win even more client trust and create growth opportunities for our people.
Larry Fink