Leadership at the world's largest asset manager (by AUM) is making cuts.

Laurence D. "Larry" Fink BlackRock Chairman, CEO

The BlackRock [profile] team is laying off about three percent of their employees, MFWire has learned. With a total employee base of about 19,000, three percent translates into about 570 positions.

Word is that the cuts came from across the $9.1-trillion-AUM, New York City-based fund firm. And despite the cuts, BlackRock insiders expect the firm's headcount to still increase for 2024 overall.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and president Rob Kapito explained the cuts in an internal memo, a copy of which was seen by MFWire.

"As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources. These changes will result in about 3% of our colleagues leaving BlackRock," Kapito and Fink write. "These departures include valued friends and colleagues who have made important contributions to the firm, and we wish them our best for the future."

"Saying goodbye to colleagues is hard, especially when many are friends as well. But it is done with the important purpose of best positioning the firm for a new environment and serving the evolving needs of our clients," Fink and Kapito write.

Yet BlackRock's chiefs argue that the firm enters the new year "with significant momentum," thanks to "strong investment performance" and client relationships, stabilizing interest rates, client portfolio consolidation, the rise of ETFs "as the preferred vehicle for delivering both index and active investment strategies," and more. They highlight momentum in several BlackRock business lines, including "private markets, OCIO, ETF and Aladdin."

"All of this presents us unprecedented opportunities. As a growth company, it is vital that we continually challenge ourselves and ask how we can best prepare for those opportunities," Kapito and Fink write, adding that the firm needs "the best talent in the industry," needs "to be agile and efficient," needs to "leverage technology," and needs to "redeploy people and resources where the client needs are greatest and the opportunities for growth the most promising." 

Edited by: Selma Khenissi, Reporter


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