We don’t talk about Bru… No. BlackRock!
The Company That Owns It All
Ever wondered who the most powerful man in the world is?
Some may say it is the President of the United States. The truth is I belong to that class right there. Others may side with corporate America and deem the likes of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to be more powerful, but there is someone else. It is likely you have never heard of BlackRock…or maybe you have, but in less than 30 years the company has grown from nothing to becoming the world’s largest asset manager. The assets on the roster exceed the value of $9 Trillion and their net worth is equal to half of America’s GDP. Clearly they do not need a name in the mainstream media to be successful or in fact own and control the entire world. But who are they, what do they do and how does this one company in America influence every industry and sector in the world?
Blackrock was founded in 1988 by Larry Fink, along with Robert Kapito, Susan Wagner, Babara Novick, Ben Golub, Hugh Frater, Ralph Schlosstein and Keith Anderson. Its aim was to provide corporations with asset management services to help them manage their risks and investments.
The idea came when Fink, during his time in First Boston, lost $100 million as its head. That experience became the motivation for him to develop what he and the others considered to be excellent risk management and fiduciary practices. BlackRock first got its funding from Peter Peterson of the Blackstone Group, who believed in the vision of a firm devoted to risk management. Fink’s company then essentially became an arm of Blackstone and was called Blackstone Financial Management. In exchange for a 50% stake in the Bond business, Blackstone gave Fink and his team a $5 million credit line. Within months the business turned profitable and by 1989 the group’s assets had quadrupled to $2.7 Billion. Blackstone stake in Fink’s company then fell to just 40% as opposed to the 60% held by Fink and his group. The firm adopted the name BlackRock in 1992 and by the end of that year it was managing $17 Billion in assets. By the end of 1994, they were handling $53 Billion. Sometime later that same year, Fink became the Chairman and CEO of BlackRock Inc. The company went public in 1999 at just 14 dollars a share on the New York Stock Exchange and by the end of that year, they were handling $165 Billion in assets.
Blackrock grew both organically and by acquisitions and in 2004, they made their first significant acquisition, buying State Street Research and Management Holdings Company (SSRM Holding Inc.) from MetLife for $325 million in cash and $50 million of BlackRock class A common stock…and this was only the beginning.
To an extent we are aware that a handful of mega corporations and private investment companies dominate every aspect of our lives — what we watch, eat, drink, wear, buy and do is all dictated. It is all less of a personal choice and more what is fed to us by corporations. These investment firms are so enormous they control the money flow worldwide. While it may appear that there are hundreds of competing brands in the market, the truth is larger parent companies actually own multiple smaller brands, like Russian nesting dolls. Pepsico for example, owns a long list of food, beverage and snack brands as does Coca-Cola, Nestle, General Mills, Unilever, Mars, KraftHeinz and Associated British Foods. Together, these parent companies monopolize the package food industry as virtually every food brand available belongs to them. These companies are publicly traded and are run by boards, where the largest shareholders have power over the decision making and here is where it gets interesting.
When you look up who the largest shareholders are, you find yet another monopoly. While the topmost shareholders can change from time to time based on shares bought and sold, two companies are consistently listed among the top institutional holders of these parent companies — The Vanguard Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc. The same ownership trend exists in industries beside food and beverage. If you’re planning a family vacation and using your laptop, phone or tablet to research ticket prices and hotel stay, your go-to will probably be a site like Skyscanner, Booking.com, AirBnB or Expedia, which provides you with all the information you need in one convenient place. Well, both of these companies are owned by BlackRock. You book your vacation and are set to fly, most likely with American Airline, Air France, KLM, United Airlines, Delta or Transavia, all of which BlackRock has a stake in. Even if you were not flying with any of these airlines, BlackRock still owns a percentage of Boeing and AirBus — two of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world. If you arrive at your hotel and choose to write a review of your stay on TripAdvisor, you would be using a service also partly owned by BlackRock…and their ownership goes much further.
The Kerosene that fuels the plane comes from their many oil companies and refineries and the steel that makes the plane also comes from their mines. The agricultural sector is not exempt from this either as BlackRock owns Bayer, the world’s largest seed producer, along with some of the largest textile manufacturing plants and clothing companies. In addition to that, BlackRock has a stake in solar panel producing companies, major drug companies, and the scientific institute and labs that fund drug studies. Places where you shop — from malls to department stores, to Amazon and AliExpress, are owned by BlackRock. If you choose not to shop with them and support smaller local business you are still supporting BlackRock when you use your credit card or any digital mode of payment to pay for your goods and services. Insurance companies, Banks, Construction companies, Telephone companies, Restaurants, personal care brands and make up brands are all in their sizeable portfolio. In virtually every major company, you find BlackRock among the top 10 institutional investors and with its massive reach, it is essentially the fourth branch of government, influencing policies and decisions and even lending money to the Central Bank and Federal Reserve.
The 2008 Financial Crisis had the New York Federal Reserve Leader, Timothy Geithner, ask BlackRock for help to manage the distressed assets, Bear Stearns and AIG. In an echo of 2008, the Fed once again relied on BlackRock to stabilize the bond market amid the economic turmoil caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic. The details of the arrangement were however not revealed, including how much BlackRock would be paid for their services, but it was undoubtedly a lucrative undertaking for the company, not to mention that they would also be in a position that they would profit from the advice they gave.
BlackRock, of course, has used the dependence of the Central Bank and Feds to grow even further and this power has allowed Larry Fink to become a Billionaire Oligarch, holding incredible power, not just in America but all over the world. If the company and Larry Fink hold such power, why is it that you have not heard of them more? There is power in anonymity. If BlackRock is barely featured in print publications and news channels, it is because they want it to be so. If they wanted, they could feature every day. BlackRock currently owns 18% of Fox, 16% of CBS and 13% of Comcast, which in turn owns NBC, MSNBC and Sky. If any of those companies wanted to make a decision, they would have to also consult with BlackRock before doing so. The same is true for Google, a tech giant currently worth $853 Billion. Amazon, Facebook and Twitter (You may want to revert to my article on Twitter) are also not exempt, and neither is Disney. Thanks to their incredibly diverse investment portfolio in media alone, BlackRock essentially owns 90% of the world’s media. If you don’t know about them, it’s because they don’t want you to.
Why?
Owning a portion of the world doesn’t come without its share of scandal or conflicts. In August 2020, BlackRock became the first foreign company to be allowed into China’s mutual fund industry, which means they can now invest and own part of Chinese companies, including ones that are blacklisted by the United States. One of the first investments made by BlackRock was in Hiki Vision, a securtity and communications firm that essentially makes facial recognition software for use by the Chinese government. But these monies aren’t BlackRock’s or Larry Fink’s. They come from pension funds and bank accounts of ordinary civilians who have unknowingly given money to BlackRock in the past.
If we take into account BlackRock’s ownership over western media, banks, ecommerce stores, social media, food and beverages and many more industries, it becomes evident that the company has a wealth of data on us and may do with it what they please. TikTok’s data harvesting pales in comparison to what BlackRock is capable of, given how they have everything from our bank account numbers to our personal taste and preferences. As BlackRock’s investment in China grows, so will China’s influence on the world and our personal data, which was hanging on a thread to begin with, will quickly end up in the wrong hands. With the trajectory BlackRock has been on, it seems their influence will only grow as they acquire more and more of the world to control. If that is the case, we are headed to a dystopian world were corporations have more power than governments and things like voting and freedom of speech have less power than investment boards. What is the escape from this reality?
#OnucheOfTheRoots #Job32:8 💙👑🌍
Largely sourced from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsQrDFLe-2M