Blackrock CEO upbeat on how the world is going

Larry Fink, the Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager with $3.79 trillion (Dh13.93 trillion) assets under management and around $9.9 trillion additionally in assets on its investment management platform, is surprisingly upbeat about how the world is moving, compared with 10 months ago when he last spoke to media. “The world is a pretty good place when you think about what is going on in China, and in Japan. The stabilisation of Europe is far better than a year ago. The direction of the US economy is more understood today and Mexico is growing from strength to strength. There is still uncertainty around the Middle East and Gulf region but all in all you can summarise the world today versus a year ago as feeling a lot better.” The US markets are a lot more confident than they were a year ago, in the view of Fink, and even with the current uncertainty around the political process, there is an assumption that the economy will be put right in the long term. That said, Fink sees continued concern over how the Obama administration will move on from its short-term fix of the fiscal cliff, and uncertainty about how the administration will develop a long term economic policy.

“The solution that was designed in Washington [for the fiscal cliff] was a short term fix. Now we have the whole issue of the sequester, and the additional cuts in the deficit that must be addressed. Once that is done, we can have a sensible long term process.