Larry Fink is the third most influential person in the mutual fund industry, the 48th most powerful person in the world and was last year's highest paid CEO in finance. Now, the BlackRock chief has a new title: nerd king. The title is courtesy of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which last week profiled Fink and placed an illustration of him and his brain on its cover.

Larry Fink BlackRock CEO

BlackRock "makes most of its money through old-fashioned money management rather than by taking positions for itself," write Sheelah Kolhatkar and Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam in the cover story for the mag's Dec. 13-19 issue. "On Wall Street, whether boring is suddenly better, Fink is the newly minted nerd king."

Topics tackled in the article include Fink's desire to continue building the BlackRock brand, the work the firm has done for the government and what Fink thinks of comparisons between his firm and Goldman Sachs ("They're in such a different business. I don't want to be in that business.").

The reporters also devote a portion of the article to fund performance. "And for all its expertise in evaluating fixed-income assets, BlackRock's own long-term track record in the area has been mediocre. In the three years ended Sept. 30, funds represesnting only 55 percent of BlackRock's fixed-income assets had beaten their respective benchmarks," they write.

As for BlackRock's 2009 purchase of Barclays Global Investors, including the iShares business, the article includes a piece of trivia that some fundsters may not have previously known: the deal was "hatched" by BlackRock president and co-founder Robert Kapito during a Yankees game. 

Edited by: Armie Margaret Lee


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