ANDREW ROSS SORKIN, CNBC ANCHOR: BlackRock out with fourth quarter and four-year results this morning. The stock right now on the back of that news. Let's show you where things stand because the world's largest asset manager now overseeing $11.6 trillion under management. Beat the top and bottom lines. The stock up about a little over 2% right now in the fourth quarter. BlackRock generating $281 billion in net inflows.
And I ended up speaking to BlackRock chairman and CEO Larry Fink in an exclusive interview and asked him about the factors that appear to be driving the performance.
LARRY FINK, BLACKROCK CHAIRMAN & CEO: We announced three mergers in 2024. We spent $27 billion in acquiring these three firms. Generally, when you're doing mergers, clients pause. They want to see what the firm looks like. They want to understand what does it mean for them. And our job is to try to tell them what everything means to them.
So in the context, when we did three remarkable mergers, we had a record amount of inflows from clients. So $641 billion of net inflows, $241 billion in the last quarter. Over $360 billion just from the U.S. alone over the course of the year. Across every segment in the world, whether it's passive, active, index, alternatives, we had really great flows. And what it translates into, clients are believing that BlackRock can help them and provide more for them.
SORKIN: OK, but what do you think you're doing? Meaning this money is coming in at a time where it's not being, you know, evenly dispersed to all the asset managers in the world, right?
FINK: No, but I think what's going on in the asset management industry is true in most industries. Clients are doing business with fewer organizations. You see that in retailing. So let's look at Walmart versus so many of their competitors. Their market share really improved over the course of the year. I think what's going on is if you could provide more and if you have the scale of providing that with your clients, and clients will reward you with that.
And I do believe our penetration with clients worldwide, from cash management to long-duration assets across the board, fixed income inequities and alternatives, really just gives us that differentiating model.
Now, you know, we are the number one firm in ETS. We're the number one firm in investment technology through Aladdin, where we had 12% organic growth in that, on top of that. We had 7% net new fee growth. So every metric, as you suggested, was a record moment for us.
