‘Increasingly Skeptical’

“Chief investment officers everywhere from insurers to Merrill Lynch are increasingly skeptical of the value you can find in security selection,” he said.

ETFs have already proven to be one of the most influential forces in investing for the past 20 years. Since the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust appeared in 1993, ETFs have grown to almost $2.6 trillion, including $1.82 trillion in the U.S, according to data compiled by ETFGI LLP and Bloomberg. Hedge funds and other frequent traders were among the first users, while retail investors have poured in over the past decade.

Rising Star

Barclays’s investment division jumped into the market with its iShares brand in 1996. At the time of BlackRock’s acquisition of the Barclays Global Investors in 2009, Wiedman was head of BlackRock’s corporate strategy and Fink tapped him, even before the deal was finished, to weave the unit into the larger firm. Wiedman, who was named head of the iShares division less than two years later, is considered a rising star at the firm, at a time when 61-year-old Fink is grooming a new group of leaders as part of a succession plan.

“If you look at the leadership of iShares under Mark, they’ve married two very different cultures inside BlackRock and they’ve found a winning formula,” Reggie Browne, head of ETF trading at Cantor Fitzgerald LP in New York. “Now it’s just a matter of bringing that formula to customers and finding new adopters.”

An animated speaker, Wiedman keeps his hands and arms in motion as he makes a point. With his shirt sleeves rolled up and jacket off for comfort, Wiedman speaks at a fast clip, often finishing other people’s sentences.

‘Nondescript’ House

He was raised on Long Island -- “Exit 39, in a nondescript suburb in a nondescript house” -- by a father who still practices medicine at age 84. His mother, who died 17 years ago, taught nursing at Nassau Community College.

The nondescript phase of his life ended at Harvard College where he graduated magna cum laude before earning a J.D. from Yale Law School. He then clerked for Judge Richard Cudahy in the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. The idea of being a judge was appealing, “but 25 years of law practice weren’t for me.”