Actively-managed-fund inflows helped BlackRock break the barrier, as those funds took almost 50% of BlackRock’s new money.
BlackRock the world’s biggest money manager has breached the $10 trillion mark for assets under management, ending 2021 at $10.01 trillion.
The information came in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report Friday.
Actively-managed-fund inflows helped BlackRock break the $10 trillion barrier in the quarter. Active funds sucked up almost 50% of the $211.7 billion net new money that customers sank into BlackRock last quarter, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Active funds, of course, are those where the managers choose their own holdings, as opposed to passive funds, where holdings match an index.
“We generated a record $267 billion of net inflows from active strategies in 2021, including a second consecutive year of record active equity inflows,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in the company’s earnings call.
“Active strategies contributed over 60% of our annual organic base fee, and our growth is significantly outpacing that of our peers and the broader industry as we take market share in this fragmented landscape.”
Investors’ shift to passive investing in recent years has hurt BlackRock and other money managers, because the managers’ fees are lower for passive management than for active management.
Active funds make up only about 25% of BlackRock’s assets, but they accounted for almost 50% of BlackRock’s fees in the fourth quarter, according to The Journal.
As for overall earnings, BlackRock reported profit of $1.64 billion, or $10.63 a share, for the fourth quarter, up from $1.55 billion, or $10.02, a year earlier. The S&P Global Market Intelligence analyst consensus called for $10.22 per share in the latest quarter.
Revenue gained 14% to $5.11 billion, trailing analysts’ forecast of $5.15 billion.
