Boards and management teams must also assess such risks, challenges, and opportunities where they could materially impact the future of a business. The latest letter also reiterates how evolving risks and opportunities - whether related to changes in globalization, supply chains, geopolitics, inflation, monetary and fiscal policy, climate, or human capital - continue to reshape the business environment, and that it remains paramount for asset managers including BlackRock to identify and manage investment risks that could impact client portfolios.

Fink’s letter highlights the importance of this ongoing relationship and partnership between companies and asset managers as well as between companies and their other stakeholders in the context of the stakeholder governance model of corporate purpose. This is the conception of corporate purpose articulated in The New Paradigm (issued by the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council in 2016), supported by the Business Roundtable beginning in 2019, and widely accepted by corporate leaders, investors, companies, and practitioners. Central to this mission is recognition that stakeholders (shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and communities) are critical to a company’s long-term success, and that boards and management should consider their interests when exercising their business judgment. This year, Fink combined the two letters into one to underscore that in serving its clients, BlackRock has also created value for its shareholders - a demonstration of stakeholder capitalism at work.Īs we recently explained, major asset managers such as BlackRock play a critical role in supporting companies as they seek to fulfill their fundamental purpose of pursuing long-term, sustainable value creation.

For more than ten years, Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has published separate annual letters - one to CEOs and another to BlackRock’s shareholders.

Larry finks