Larry Fink was once a prince of Wall Street. In the 1980s he became the youngest managing director ever at First Boston, where he was a pioneer in the mortgage bond market. He might have been fitted for the crown at the investment bank, now owned by Credit Suisse, but in 1986 his mortgage department lost $100m in a single quarter. Two years later he was out.
Today, as the head of BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager, with $3.7tn in assets – Mr Fink is at the pinnacle of US finance. But do not suggest that he is a Wall Street chieftain. Mr Fink has long defined himself as an anti-Wall Street figure.
“I have always said we are not Wall Street. We left Wall Street,” says Mr Fink. “We have a different business model, which happens to be better for the environment we live in.”