Reports
Net Income Rose At BlackRock In Q4 From Year Ago; AuM Gained Despite Market Turmoil
2016 will go down as a turbulent year for many reasons but the world's largest listed fund manager emerged from it with higher AuM and a broadly robust set of financial results.
BlackRock, the world’s largest listed investment house, has reported net income for 2016 of $3.214 billion, a 3 per cent year-on-year decline, while its fourth-quarter net income rose 6 per cent to $852 million from a year earlier.
Total assets under management at the US-listed firm stood at $5.148 trillion at the end of December, 2016, a rise of 11 per cent from a year earlier, it said in a statement. Net flows were $202.191 billion last year, up from $149.895 billion in 2015.
Operating margin at BlackRock was 43.7 per cent through the whole of 2016, up from 4.29 per cent in 2015.
BlackRock said that as far as long-term inflows to its business were concerned, net inflows were positive across all major regions, with net inflows of $46.0 billion, $38.2 billion and $3.6 billion from clients in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, respectively. At December 31, 2016, BlackRock managed 63 per cent of its long-term AuM for investors in the Americas and 37 per cent for clients in EMEA and Asia-Pacific.
“In a year of dramatic change and uncertainty around the world, clients continued to put their trust in BlackRock, allowing us to deliver the strongest annual net inflows in our firm’s history,” Laurence Fink, chairman and CEO, said.
“While domestic equities rallied following the US election, the combination of a strengthening dollar, underperforming international equities and negative fixed income markets produced challenging outcomes for global investors. Investors are rethinking their approach to active management, asset allocation and portfolio construction, and we’re seeing more clients use active and index strategies together to deliver returns,” he continued.
BlackRock’s iShares brand of ETFs – the world’s largest - generated a record $140 billion of net inflows for the year, including $60 billion into iShares fixed income ETFs, capturing the number 1 share of flows globally, in the US and in Europe, and in equity and fixed income, it said.
