Investors put an estimated $73 billion into active funds industrywide this year through March, while depositing $34 billion into passive funds, according to data compiled by Morningstar Inc. in Chicago. U.S. exchange-traded products had their best ever start to a year, attracting new assets of $55.6 billion in the first three months of 2011, according to data compiled by BlackRock.
BlackRock in February started a "new world" campaign to tell clients how to invest in an uncertain market. Four-page inserts appeared in publications including the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times as part of the branding initiative. Fink and other BlackRock executives have spoken publicly about how investors can be harmed by staying in cash-like products and focusing on short-term investing.
BlackRock's Acquisitions
The firm, which acquired Barclays Global Investors in December 2009, offers actively managed stock and bond funds, passive strategies, hedge funds and portfolios that use mathematical models, giving it the broadest array of products among money managers.
Fink, who co-founded BlackRock in 1988, has built the firm through a series of acquisitions, including the 2006 purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co.'s investment unit. BlackRock acquired the hedge fund-of-funds business of Quellos Group LLC in 2008. The company last year expanded the alternatives division, which manages hedge funds, real estate funds and private-equity strategies.