BLACKROCK hauled in US$51 billion of client cash to its long-term investment funds in the second quarter, pushing the world’s largest money manager to a record US$10.6 trillion of assets.
Investors added US$83 billion to ETFs and US$35 billion to fixed-income overall, New York-based BlackRock said on Monday (Jul 15) in a statement. Net flows to the long-term investment funds missed the US$86 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
“Organic growth was driven by private markets, retail active fixed income, and surging flows into our ETFs, which had their best start to a year on record,” chief executive officer Larry Fink said in the statement.
The company also had US$30 billion in net flows to cash-management and money-market funds in the period. Total net flows were US$82 billion.
Money managers are beginning to rebound after a bumpy ride during the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes and volatility in bond markets over the past two years.
The S&P 500 index rose about 4 per cent in the second quarter after a roughly 10 per cent increase in the first three months of the year, and investors are wagering that the central bank will start cutting rates in September from a four-decade decade high.
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That is fuelling flows of client cash into fixed-income funds, with asset managers pointing out the risks of staying too long in money-market funds that may no longer be able to offer 5 per cent yields once rates come down.
BlackRock is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for a wide range of actively managed and index ETFs and mutual funds, while seeking to expand its business in fast-growing and lucrative private assets.
The company’s US$12.5 billion acquisition of Global Infrastructure Partners will add about US$100 billion of assets to the company and vault the firm into the top ranks of infrastructure investors.
Last month, BlackRock announced a £2.55 billion (S$4.44 billion) acquisition of Preqin, the private-markets data firm.
Fink and senior executives said Preqin will enable BlackRock to “index the private markets” and use data and analytics to broaden access to alternative assets.
BlackRock’s adjusted net income per share rose 12 per cent from a year ago to US$10.36, beating Wall Street’s average estimate of US$9.93. Revenue increased 8 per cent to US$4.8 billion from a year ago.
Shares of BlackRock have risen about 2 per cent this year as of market close on Friday, trailing the 18 per cent advance of the S&P 500 Index. BLOOMBERG
