[NEW YORK] The world’s largest asset manager BlackRock pulled in a less-than-expected US$83 billion of client money to its investment funds in the first quarter, which ended just days before President Donald Trump unleashed tariffs that stoked extreme volatility across stock and bond markets.
Investors added US$107 billion to exchange-traded funds and US$38 billion to fixed income in the first quarter, New York-based BlackRock said on Friday (Apr 11) in a statement. The net flows into the firm’s long-term investment funds missed the US$105 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
“Uncertainty and anxiety about the future of markets and the economy are dominating client conversations,” chief executive officer Larry Fink said in the statement. “We’ve seen periods like this before when there were large, structural shifts in policy and markets – like the financial crisis, Covid and surging inflation in 2022.”
BlackRock’s adjusted net income per share in the quarter rose 15 per cent from a year ago to US$11.30 per share. That beat the average analyst estimate of US$10.11. Revenue rose 12 per cent to US$5.3 billion from a year ago.
The firm’s total assets under management were US$11.6 trillion as of Mar 31 – virtually unchanged from the final three months of 2024 – after a quarter in which US equities declined, while many global stock and US bond indexes rose.
The money manager also had US$46 billion in outflows from institutional investors in index funds. It also had US$4 billion of outflows from investors in the Asia-Pacific region, the only one of its three regions to end negative.
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BlackRock took in US$9.3 billion in overall alternative assets in the quarter, including US$7.1 billion in private markets.
The firm is undergoing a significant transformation by expanding into higher-fee alternative assets, including infrastructure and private credit, after committing almost US$30 billion in the past year over three acquisitions. BlackRock, which will have about US$600 billion in alternative assets when all deals are complete, is increasingly competing against private-asset leaders Blackstone, Apollo Global Management and KKR & Co.
For years, BlackRock was a “traditional asset manager” largely of stocks and bonds, Fink said last month in his annual letter to investors. But now, he wrote, “It’s not who we are anymore.”
Trump’s tariff announcement on April two sent stock markets plunging around the world and led to convulsions in bond markets – rivalling the volatility during the 2008 financial crisis and onset of the pandemic in 2020. The market moves – especially in US Treasuries, considered the world’s risk-free asset – spurred some of Trump’s allies to call on him to back off of the tariffs.
The president ultimately paused the “reciprocal tariffs” for 90 days on Wednesday, while leaving in place 10 per cent duties on imports from most countries and levies of 145 per cent on Chinese imports.
Shares of BlackRock declined 16 per cent this year as of market close on Thursday, trailing the 10 per cent decline of the S&P 500 Index. BLOOMBERG
