Laurence D. Fink: The man who runs $ 5 trillion

Laurence D. Fink is the founder and leader of BlackRock, the largest asset management fund in the world, but like many others he has had a difficult start. As a young star on Wall Street, he lost nearly $100 million, thanks to unsuccessful mortgage deals. But what makes him great is how he describes that he has failed and how it has helped him become a leader who watches more than $ 16 trillion of the US economy. "I was too sure of what I knew, I believed I was unfolding the market, and I was wrong because I did not see the world changed."

Over the last decades, there is no other financial institution to challenge Wall Street's classic moneymaking, investment banks and traditional mutual funds: to hire and pay generously to big players who make big stakes with people's money. According to Fink, the future of finances is based on data-based rules and investment styles such as stock-traded funds that track different stock and bond indexes or adhere to a set of financial rules. The idea is that such an approach eliminates at least some opportunities for human error and at the same time reduces costs. It is precisely this idea to eradicate the risk that is at the heart of BlackRock's investment, namely the Aladdin Risk Reduction Platform. It tracks everything.

In our days, central banks, sovereign wealth funds and the largest hedge funds determine the direction of the market. It is no longer important the flow of securities, but the flow of information. "Today's balance sheet is determined by companies like BlackRock because they hold bid-a," analysts say. Over the past 10 years, Fink has transformed BlackRock into an asset-gathering machine that uses advanced technology to rethink how investors buy, sell, and rate risk. Thanks to its new Aladdin data mining platform, Fink can determine how the securities will react in certain stressful situations, such as a sudden rise in interest rates or in the event of political surprise, and that Donald Trump is to be elected president. Aladdin helps businesses trade, analyze, and keep an eye on their assets. In a world of heavily regulated control, the service has become quite popular. At present, 75 companies, including Deutsche Bank and Freddie Mac, managing a total of $10 trillion, use it.

Almost every BlackRock employee has Aladdin on his monitor. One employee even catches a screen as large as in the cinema to sense the full impact of the platform. In a recent maker video, Fink himself is portrayed alongside other top managers who repeat one after another, "I'm Aladdin." After the assets of the Communist Party doubled in 2011, ahead of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, it seems that the market has entered Mr. Fink's financial outlook.

"We have more information than anyone," says the investor. Some analysts, in fact, claim that BlackRock should be valued as a technology company rather than as an asset management fund. Mark Wiedman, one of Blackrock's main contractors, believes ETF bonds create a liquid market where a new generation of investors can buy and sell. For years, he and Mr. Fink wanted to urge insurance companies and pension funds to stop buying separate bonds and instead opt for Blackrock's ETFs and now it's becoming a reality. According to Wiedman, ETF is a new technology that groups a bunch of securities, puts them on the screen and makes them much easier to trade.

"If you think you know everything on the market, you are misleading. The big question we have to ask is whether we are developing the right leaders."

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