Guru watch

The world faces a mounting “retirement crisis”, says Larry

Fink, the chief executive and co-founder of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. As people live longer with the help of medical advances, providing them with a “secure, wellearned retirement” will be a “harder proposition than it was 30 years ago. And it’ll be a much harder proposition 30 years from now.”

Revolutionary new weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy don’t just help tackle obesity – they may also help to extend healthy life, says Fink in his annual letter to investors. “These drugs are breakthroughs. But they underscore a frustrating irony: as a society, we focus a tremendous amount of energy on helping people live longer lives. But not even a fraction of that effort is spent helping people afford those extra years.”

The world’s other great challenge is to meet the huge need for infrastructure. “As countries decarbonise and digitise their economies, they’re supercharging demand for all sorts of infrastructure, from telecom networks to new ways to generate power.”

Funding for all these investments cannot come from governments alone, because public finances are already stretched. “From Italy to South Africa, many nations are suffering the highest debt burdens in their history.” Global public debt has reached 92% of GDP and interest rates are rising. “The future of infrastructure is public-private partnership.”

The greatest demand will be in the energy sector, driven by two main factors. One is the energy transition – the shift towards renewables helped by falling wind and solar costs. The second is the greater focus on energy security. Sometimes these trends compete, but at other times they will complement each other, says Fink. Call it “energy pragmatism”, when “the same advanced battery that decarbonises your grid can also reduce your dependence on foreign power”.