The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 34 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Walthour: Larry Fink's diversity pledge was PR to deflect Blueprint's lawsuit
“Larry Fink comes out with an announcement on June, 22nd, that he's going to increase his black staff by 30% over four years. I'd like to think that we had positive influence there, but I think that it really was not a heartfelt announcement. It was really desi…”
Passive investor ESG proposals are mostly value-neutral or value-destructive
“And they might have 10 or 15 ideas for ESG change. And, you know, of those, call it 10 ideas. Five might be value neutral. Three might be value destructive, a waste of time or a waste of capital without return. And two might be value accretive.”
Rieder: The Federal Reserve is making a mistake by delaying its taper
“I'm pretty wigged out, but I think the Fed's waiting too long, and I think they're making a mistake.”
Caesars' B-7 loan eliminated its maintenance covenant and parent guarantee
“And they offered them very, very generous fees, among other things, to participate in this transaction that accomplishes three things. One, it's gonna give them some liquidity to refinance out some of their other debt. Two, it's going to remove the most onerou…”
BlackRock backed small-business entity in Dish Network AWS-3 spectrum auction
“We did a wireless spectrum deal with Charlie Ergen and Dish Networks, where he was entering the spectrum auctions for the AWS three band, back to media and communications roots. And we backed a small business, which entered the auction as a small business elig…”
BlackRock studies showed PE delivered 300 to 400 bps of pure alpha
“First of all, empirically, the private equity industry has delivered a premium. We did these studies at BlackRock, and even when you controlled for Cap selection, industry focus, leverage adjustments, fees. It still delivered, you know, three to 400 basis poin…”
Most UHNW investors cannot name three alternative asset providers
“I'll call out a Bain survey from twenty-twenty-two. Bain and company asked 418 ultra high net worth individuals. Name three firms that come to mind when you think of alternative assets and who are the providers. First answer, the biggest answer in the bubble c…”
Rieder: Real alpha in fixed income will come from bespoke structured originations
“I think where a lot of the real alpha is going to be going forward. It's bespoke investments where you functionally create the investment, whether it's in the commercial real estate or resi or a European asset finance. The term loan to an aircraft producer. Th…”
Rieder: Stan Druckenmiller and David Tepper are the best investors I've seen
“And you have to say the two best investors I've ever seen, Stan Druckenmiller and David Tepper, both are friends of mine. They have an ability in a much more efficient way than I do of separating out. That's not important. That's not important. This is importa…”
GSO and BlackRock received roughly $220 million for Caesars B-7 loan
“First they had to get a couple of commitments from GSO and from BlackRock, which I think they committed to about half of this 1.7 billion dollar renew financing to be the seventh tranche of this term loan. And they got something like two hundred twenty million…”
BlackRock's acquisition of Preqin signals upcoming private equity index products
“BlackRock just bought Prequin, and they're going to be putting out private equity index products first”
Forman: BlackRock's Spot Bitcoin ETF Saw $37 Billion in 2024 Inflows
“So BlackRock's ETF had thirty seven billion of inflows in 2024. That was the third most of any ETF In the market. And by far the largest first year launch in history.”
Abell: Larger private equity investments historically yield lower returns with less risk
“We were doing at BlackRock larger investments on the fund side, larger investments on the co-invest side and secondary side, and that part of the market has historically generated less returns, and certainly in a less risky way as well.”
Steyer: 10% of US wealth clients request ESG versus 90% in Europe
“In the United States, if you talk to the huge asset gatherers, the Black Rocks, the Goldmans, if they get a new investment client, so they come in and they're going to have an investment advisor, and they're going to allocate their portfolio, 10% of them want …”
Institutional allocators reject separate systems for public and private data
“BlackRock and certainly the work that they've done to acquire eFront and try to pull together Aladdin and eFront, these are all the same indicators, right? That clients no longer want their public markets data and their private markets data into separate syste…”
Rieder: BlackRock is paring back US high yield for IG and securitized debt
“We think a lot of the U S high yield markets got rich. So we've been pairing that back on more up into up an IG, running up more of a barbell with some securitized assets, learning a little bit of EM and then just letting the teams go.”
Rieder: BlackRock prefers owning junior tranches in CLOs to control structures
“Oftentimes today, for example, the CLO market, We like to own the lower parts of the debt stock because we'd like to own the structure.”
Rieder: BlackRock lets European credit traders run equity positions when spreads tighten
“If we have somebody in Europe that's trading credit, I'll let them run a piece of equity in their position because there are times where like credit spreads are too tight. And I don't want them to be sitting there doing nothing.”
Rieder: BlackRock's sheer scale provides a major information advantage over macro funds
“The information flow within the four walls of this organization around how many walls there are in this organization is unbelievable. And I always think like, how can they make masks? Do you think Japan will be a buyer or seller of bonds and manage a lot of mo…”
McCusker: BlackRock's SIO fund runs high tracking error for fixed income
“Within a fixed income allocation, It's a pretty high tracking error strategy when you think about what most fixed income strategies deliver for tracking error.”
Rieder: Fixed income strategy requires high trade volume and avoiding concentrated duration bets
“My philosophy and fixed income Is diversify, do a lot of trades, get regime right, get the asset allocation right, and then do a lot of relative value trades. Don't make a huge bet on duration. Don't make a huge bet that's going to overwhelm the whole portfoli…”
Lawrence: Overlook incorporated sustainability 8 to 10 years ahead of BlackRock
“BlackRock comes out and says that they're going to be incorporating sustainability. We did this eight, nine, 10 years ago.”
Fleming: Larry Fink's leadership, not just iShares, drove BlackRock's success
“BlackRock's a good example of great leadership. Larry Fink, he's a really good leader, both strategically in terms of where they should go, and putting people in the right seats and motivating them. And that's one reason why that firm has done as well as it ha…”
Khe Hy: Financial services has an extraordinary concentration of smart people
“There's so many smart people in the financial services industry, and you just take for granted that you could just show up in an industry and just be surrounded by people that, and it's not just smart, finance smart, just like worldish smart”
Pension fund hypothecated art portfolio to satisfy arbitrary board liquidity rule
“I used to encounter at BlackRock, we met a pension fund that had come to us for permission to basically hypothecate their entire art portfolio to Deutsche so that they could get an intraday liquidity facility because their board wanted them to be intraday liqu…”
Bushey: Mega-fund PMs have a distorted sense of raising outside capital
“I would say both of those experiences probably gave me a different sense of how hard it was to raise outside capital than it should have been. You didn't have to market. You just get a phone call being like, XYZ client wants to send you a large pile of money. …”
Mogelof: Six asset managers control over 85% of target date fund assets
“There are really six managers that dominate the market, probably have 85 plus percent of the assets. That's Vanguard, Fidelity, BlackRock, State Street, T. Rowe, and Capital Group.”
Rieder: BlackRock's global fixed income platform manages $2.6 trillion in assets
“I'm the CIO of global fixed income. So I guess our total size of that is 2.6 trillion. We've got obviously huge I shares business, a big passive business.”
McCusker: BlackRock's Strategic Income Opportunities is NEPC's most notable BlackRock allocation
“So we do think highly of them and we use them in a lot of different ways, but Rick's strategic income opportunity strategy is probably the most notable one that we use.”
Fleming: Merrill Lynch held 49% stake in BlackRock before 2008 crisis
“We ended up at that time owning 49% of BlackRock, and I went on the board, so I had Intimate insight into BlackRock going into the crisis, which was big asset for Merrill Lynch.”
Prosek: BlackRock pioneered sophisticated asset management marketing for decades
“BlackRock was probably one of the pioneers in sophisticated marketing in the asset management space. They didn't become BlackRock overnight. They've been marketing for 35, 40 years, and Larry Fink's been a thought leader for, what, 25 years.”
Bushey: Sunderland Capital launched after securing BlackRock fund's seed client
“And so I approached the client who seeded this fund at BlackRock and I said, would you support me if I did it independently? And I was really lucky that they said yes.”
Rieder left Lehman in May 2008 before merging his fund into BlackRock
“Then I went to Lehman, went out of Lehman to run a hedge fund, and unfortunately I did a Mayo eight, wasn't exactly perfect timing. Good timing to leave Lehman, but it wasn't a perfect time to set up a credit hedge fund. And then we had a tough oh eight. And t…”