Larry Fink completely changed the flow of capital around the world in 2009 with iShares, the absolute leader in the ETF market. Larry Fink, who transformed from a failed trader to an architect of the ‘rules of capital,’ is reorganizing the operating system of the global economy through a massive $14 trillion empire.
[스페셜] ‘$14 trillion ambition’ BlackRock’s secret to success
The ‘World Economic Forum (WEF/Davos Forum)’ was held at Suite Davos on January 19th. Global leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, gathered in one place. An unusually large number of leaders have gathered in a situation where a fragmented world is emerging. The main character of the 2026 Davos Forum, where about 850 CEOs of global companies gathered and about 65 heads of state, including the G7, was not President Trump. Larry Fink was the CEO of BlackRock.
Chairman Pink mobilized all of his extensive contacts to rebuild the World Economic Forum, which was receiving criticism both internally and externally. Chairman Pink said, “We live in a more polarized world. There are more people talking to each other, but no one is ‘talking’ to each other. I directly contacted many people, including heads of state and corporate CEOs. The idea was to regain the trust of policy makers, corporate leaders, and civic groups.”
How the ETF Empire Started
This year’s Davos Forum was an event that symbolically demonstrated the global influence of Chairman Pink and BlackRock. This is because BlackRock goes beyond being the world’s largest asset management company based in the U.S. and plays the role of an ‘invisible hand’ that moves politics and markets around the world.
As of January 2026, BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management company, managing $14 trillion (approximately KRW 1 trillion). This size is larger than the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of Germany, Japan, and India. But numbers alone cannot explain the essence of BlackRock. BlackRock is no longer a company that makes money. They are designing the very rules by which capital moves.
In 1986, Chairman Fink was the most promising bond trader at First Boston. While he was enjoying success as a pioneer in the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) market, an unexpected disaster befell him. As the interest rate prediction went wrong, he lost $100 million (approximately 130 billion won) in a single transaction. He went from a hero to a criminal overnight and had to leave the company.
For most people, this level of failure is the end of their career. But Pink derived a lifelong business principle from this trauma. This is ‘completely understanding and controlling risk.’
In 1988, he founded BlackRock with seven partners with a $5 million investment from Blackstone. The starting point was simple. The goal was not to create an investment company that maximizes profits, but to create a company that perfectly measures risk.
The result of this philosophy is ‘Aladdin’. Developed in 1999, this system monitors assets, liabilities, and derivatives in real time and calculates portfolio risk by simulating thousands of scenarios (interest rate surge, war, pandemic, etc.).
Aladdin, the heart of Black Rock
Initially, it was only an internal BlackRock tool, but in 2000, it began selling externally under the name ‘BlackRock Solutions’. Ironically, even competitors Vanguard and State Street began using Aladdin. Currently, more than $21 trillion in assets worldwide are analyzed and managed through this system. Even the Central Bank of Israel introduced Aladdin to foreign exchange reserve management.
BlackRock’s real leap forward came immediately after the 2008 financial crisis. At the time, Britain’s Barclays Bank was depleted of capital due to the acquisition of the North American division of Lehman Brothers. They had to sell their most profitable asset, Barclays Global Investors (BGI). What BGI owned was iShares, the absolute leader in the then-fledgling exchange traded fund (ETF) market.
Chairman Pink did not miss this opportunity. In June 2009, he closed the largest deal of all time at the time: $13.5 billion ($6.6 billion in cash + BlackRock stock). After a tug-of-war with private equity fund CVC, he took control of the entire BGI, even paying a $175 million contract break fee. With this acquisition, BlackRock quickly became the world’s largest management company with $2.7 trillion in assets under management.
But the real battle came after that. As the low interest rate trend continued throughout the 2010s, a boom in ‘passive investment (index tracking)’ occurred. Both individuals and institutions began investing in ETFs that track the entire market at low costs, rather than paying high fees and relying on the judgment of fund managers. BlackRock’s iShares rode the crest of this huge wave. In the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, a net inflow of $181 billion was made into the iShares ETF. These numbers show how prescient Pink’s 2009 decision was.
It didn’t end here. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused fear in financial markets around the world. U.S. stock prices plummeted 34% in just one month, and the corporate bond market was on the verge of paralysis. In this moment of crisis, the U.S. Central Bank (Fed) made the unprecedented decision to directly purchase corporate bonds for the first time in history. And it was BlackRock, not JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs, that was selected as the executor of this $750 billion rescue program.
Many on Wall Street did not question this decision. Even during the 2008 financial crisis, BlackRock was in charge of handling hundreds of billions of dollars in bad assets of Bear Stearns and AIG. Whenever the U.S. Treasury performs surgery on the heart of the financial system, the hand holding the scalpel is always the same. It was a hand named Larry Pink.
Sell a system, not a product
Pink’s strategy was consistent. While traditional financial companies sell products, BlackRock sells systems. While competitors were focused on competing for profitability, BlackRock set the standard. Instead of following the market, the structure of the market itself was changed.
ETFs are not just financial products, but have become an ‘operating system (OS) for capital allocation.’ Aladdin is not just an analysis tool, but has become the ‘common language of global finance.’ Thanks to this infrastructure, BlackRock is in a position to decide beyond “where money flows” and “how to design where money flows.”
Chairman Pink’s leadership style was also different from existing Wall Street leaders. Wall Street leaders have a rigid, command-and-control-oriented leadership style due to the nature of their dealings with finance. However, Chairman Pink encourages a culture in which anyone can disagree and refute opinions in meetings, and always emphasizes to employees the premise that “we could be wrong now.”
His theory is, “If we don’t have a culture of constantly challenging everything internally, we can suddenly fall behind.” Many analyzes say that this culture helped BlackRock gain the trust of governments and central banks during the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 coronavirus crisis.
This is where BlackRock’s nickname ‘shadow central bank’ comes from. During the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York selected BlackRock to manage the non-performing assets of Bear Stearns and AIG. During the 2020 pandemic, it was entrusted with operating the Fed’s corporate bond purchase program. Whenever the financial system is in crisis, BlackRock has always been the partner the U.S. government looks for. This is because there was a unique risk analysis system called Aladdin.
Of course, there are criticisms about this. BlackRock’s inclusion of its ETF (iShares) as a purchase target in the 2020 Fed program sparked controversy over conflict of interest. Although the contract stipulated that the ETF’s management fees be returned to the Fed, the indirect benefit of gaining market trust by being subject to purchase by the Fed could not be prevented. In addition, the fact that the Biden administration’s National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo are both BlackRock graduates is being criticized as a ‘revolving door appointment’.
Beyond finance, to become the ruler of the real economy
Pink’s actions have clearly changed since 2024. He no longer began to control ‘financial assets’ but ‘real assets’. Chairman Pink clearly declared this in his 2025 shareholder letter. “The fiscal deficit of each country has reached its limit, so taxes can no longer be poured into infrastructure investment. By 2040, global infrastructure investment demand will reach $68 trillion, and private capital must fill this gap.”
[인프라 인수]
Ruler of the sky and sea roads
In January 2024, BlackRock acquired GIP (Global Infrastructure Partners), the world’s largest infrastructure investment company, for $12.5 billion. This was the largest merger and acquisition (M&A) in BlackRock history since the acquisition of BGI in 2009. With this acquisition, BlackRock’s infrastructure assets under management soared to more than $150 billion.
A look at the list of assets held by GIP shows that BlackRock now performs the equivalent of a ‘state operation’. Gatwick Airport, London’s second airport, Edinburgh Airport, Scotland’s largest airport, Peel Port, a major port operator in the UK including the Port of Liverpool, and Signature Aviation, which operates private aircraft terminals around the world. Pink now owns the Sky Road and the Sea Road.
The same goes for energy infrastructure. GIP is participating in a consortium that holds a 49% stake in the gas pipeline of Abu Dhabi’s state-run oil company ADNOC, and has also secured shares in Suez, a French water and waste management company, and Hornsea 1, the world’s largest offshore wind farm. From the energy arteries of the Middle East to water resources and renewable energy in Europe, there is no place that BlackRock cannot reach.
[AI 인프라]
Data centers are the railroads of the 21st century
Pink pointed out data centers and power as next-generation core assets in the AI era. His logic is simple. “It costs $40 to $50 billion to build an AI data center. Just as railroads and highways led economic growth in the past, data centers will play a role in the AI era. Neither the government nor big tech companies can handle this huge capital demand alone.”
In September 2024, BlackRock launched the ‘Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership (GAIIP)’ with Microsoft, Abu Dhabi AI investment company MGX, and GIP. The goal is to invest in data centers worth up to $100 billion (about 140 trillion won). NVIDIA participates as a technical advisor and supports the chip supply chain. In 2025, this consortium signed a contract to purchase Aligned Data Centers in the United States for $40 billion.
Chairman Pink realized that the biggest bottleneck in data centers was ‘power.’ AI model training consumes enormous amounts of power. Therefore, BlackRock is investing heavily not only in data centers but also in natural gas power plants, nuclear power generation, and aging power grid modernization projects. This goes hand in hand with his recent ‘Energy Pragmatism’.
[에너지 실용주의]
Beyond the politicization of ESG
Chairman Pink once called himself an ESG (environment, society, governance) evangelist, saying, “Climate risk is an investment risk.” However, starting in 2022, Republican-led states such as Texas and Florida began defining BlackRock as an ‘anti-fossil fuel company’ and withdrawing funds from state pension funds. Accordingly, Pink declared that it would no longer use the term ESG in 2024, saying, “The term ESG has become too politicized.” Instead, the neutral term ‘Transition Investing’ was adopted.
The core of energy pragmatism is simple. “Decarbonization is necessary, but we also need fossil fuels for the time being to ensure energy security and price stability.” BlackRock’s portfolio now includes green (renewables) and brown (fossil fuels) coexistence. While investing in solar and wind power, it is also betting on the ADNOC gas pipeline and U.S. shale gas infrastructure. He chose practicality, not ideology.
[방위산업과 우크라이나 재건]
Security is sustainability
After the Russia-Ukraine war, Chairman Pink’s horizons expanded to the defense industry. In the past, he was reluctant to invest in weapons manufacturers due to ESG standards, but he changed his position. “No economic prosperity is possible without national security. If defense companies contribute to protecting liberal democracy, this is also a form of sustainability.”
In 2025, BlackRock launched the ‘iShares Defense Industrials Active ETF (IDEF)’, an active ETF that focuses on investing in the defense industry. We are expanding our investments not only in traditional defense companies such as Lockheed Martin and RTX, but also in next-generation defense tech startups such as Anduril in autonomous weapons systems and Palantir in AI-based battlefield analysis.
Additionally, BlackRock is leading the establishment of the ‘Ukrainian Development Fund (UDF)’ at the request of the Ukrainian government. It is a ‘Blended Finance’ model that first attracts concessional capital from the World Bank (WB) and each country’s government to absorb the risk of initial losses, and then attracts private capital. BlackRock’s Financial Market Advisory (FMA) team is providing pro bono (free) advice, but this leads to preoccupying the role of gatekeeper for the Ukraine reconstruction market, which is expected to be worth $50 billion to $100 billion.
[토큰화]
Designing the future of finance
Pink’s final ambition is the digitization of the financial system itself. He predicted, “The next generation technology for ETFs will be tokenization of assets.” The logic is that by converting the ownership of real assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate into digital tokens on the blockchain, transaction costs can be lowered, payments can be processed immediately, and anyone in the world can access America’s blue chip assets.
In March 2024, BlackRock launched ‘BUIDL (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund)’, a tokenization fund based on the Ethereum blockchain. One token maintains the value of one dollar, and assets are operated 100% in cash and U.S. Treasury bonds.
As of the end of 2025, BUIDL has expanded to various blockchains such as Solana, Polygon, and BNB Chain, and can be used as collateral for derivatives transactions on Binance. BlackRock’s product aims to serve as a key currency in the digital asset ecosystem.
The end of 60·40, the era of 50·30·20
In his 2025 shareholder letter, Chairman Fink declared that the traditional ‘60% stocks, 40% bonds’ portfolio model is no longer valid. This is because, in an era where inflation and geopolitical instability are commonplace, bonds are no longer as safe a hedge as they used to be. Instead, what he proposed was the ‘50 (stocks), 30 (bonds), 20 (real assets)’ model. Here, the real assets corresponding to 20% are infrastructure, real estate, and private credit. This is an area that BlackRock is intensively fostering through the acquisition of GIP and investment in AI infrastructure.
Chairman Pink preached to investors, “In the new era, we must invest in infrastructure,” and created a perfect ecosystem that attracts funds through the products the company has built. Defining the rules of the market and taking the most advantageous position within those rules. This is the Larry Pink way.
The evolution of BlackRock is the history of modern financial capitalism itself. Starting as a small bond management company in 1988, it dominated the ETF market with the acquisition of BGI in 2009 and dominated the operating system of the financial system through Aladdin. Now, it is becoming a direct owner of the real economy through the acquisition of GIP, investment in AI infrastructure, reconstruction of Ukraine, and entry into the defense industry.
An era where market, government, technology, and security are combined into one frame. Finance is no longer a neutral infrastructure. Capital became a weapon, and Larry Pink became its quartermaster. He did not buy a company, but took control of the ‘rules by which capital moves’ itself. This is the essence of a $14 trillion empire.
An era in which the private sector replaces the role of the public
BlackRock’s growth and the direction revealed by Chairman Pink are essential keywords for understanding the era of state (government)-led capitalism that is in full swing after 2025. State capitalism is not a temporary phenomenon but a structural transformation. A new paradigm is being established in which the government sets the direction and the private sector executes capital.
Artificial intelligence (AI), energy, defense, and infrastructure are no longer separate sectors but a package. Investing in data centers means investing in power, and investing in power means investing in energy security.
ETFs and passive investments are not ‘neutral’ but ‘concentrated bets’. When trillions of dollars track the same index, the market’s ability to self-regulate is weakened. If everyone drives while looking at the same map, everyone could fall off a cliff at the same time.
To survive in the world Larry Pink has designed, you have to read where he’s going. And now he is breaking down the boundaries of finance and advancing into the heart of the real economy.
Son Jae-kwon, CEO of The Milk
date: 2026-02-12 00:59:00
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